Ten years ago, Ahmed Moneka came to Toronto for TIFF with one suitcase and a film that would alter his life. That film was The Society, the first Iraqi film to feature a gay protagonist. He was here to promote it, and within days, Iraq’s militias forbade his return, forcing him to seek asylum in Canada.
Today, he stands at a triumphant intersection: having returned to TIFF 2025 in “Honey Bunch,” the latest film from Madeleine Sims-Fewer and Dusty Mancinelli. which coincides with a glorious revival production of his acclaimed theatre-music project King Gilgamesh & The Man of the Wild, and he is preparing a concert to celebrate a decade of exile, art, and community .“This is a bit special,” Moneka offers understatedly. “Ten years now!. …My anniversary is happening, and I’m doing a concert”. He has also just remounted his play King Gilgamesh at Soulpepper. “And because of what’s happening politically between Jews and Muslims,” there are a lot of “different resonations happening with this show”.
Widely acclaimed, King Gilgamesh & The Man of the Wild is a theatre-music work that interweaves two narratives: one ancient, and one contemporary. In the modern thread, actor Jesse (Jesse LaVercombe) receives bad career news in a Toronto café, where he meets Ahmed (Moneka), a café worker. Ahmed begins to tell the ancient epic of King Gilgamesh of Uruk and his friendship with Enkidu the wild man. The two actors shift back and forth between personal stories — Jesse grapples with family and belonging; while Ahmed carries exile, loss, hope — and episodes from the 11th-century BC epic, which include battles, jealous gods, and the quest for eternal life.
The show contrasts the mythic and the human: Gilgamesh’s arrogance and Enkidu’s innocence, Enkidu’s death, and Gilgamesh’s ensuing grief and search for immortality. Meanwhile, the modern characters reveal their vulnerabilities, including family expectations, displacement, longing, and connect those to themes like friendship, mortality, compassion. As Scott Sneddon observed in his Sesaya Arts Magazine review of the 2023 production, “This is why we go to the theatre … the production sweeps us into an epic, joyous, and profoundly moving story of friendship and survival.”
And this story is rooted very much in Moneka’s personal experience. When he arrived in Canada with The Society, he was unable to speak much English. “I came with one suitcase to stay here for 10 days. And now I’m back at TIFF after 10 years. As an actor who arrived to Canada, I lost my words. I lost my language. So it took me time to understand and to find a new way to tell my story.” And that way – his language of choice – was music. Moneka recalls the specific moment when he met a “guy friend” in Kensington Market, gaining a human connection that he had been seeking. Then “it was a group of people, and they were playing music. And something really grabbed me toward them. So I sit with them. I start playing drums – and then become a friend.” There was a flash of recognition: “Maybe this is the thing. Maybe this is the human thing that I should do.”
These early days of busking — of making something, he recalls – laid the foundation for his Juno Award-nominated band Moneka Arabic Jazz , which now scores King Gilgamesh live. And he is justifiably chuffed as he considers its impact: “Today, after 10 years, I started this movement, and now we see over 15 Arabic bands. And they play for Arabic youth and also Canadian Toronto – a mix of people. I’m so proud because I followed my instincts. I followed my heart, instead of doubting myself”.
Collaboration, boundary-crossing, and shared humanity inform much of Moneka’s work. “What really makes me grounded is creativity … telling stories that no one has really heard about us as Arabs or as Iraqis …. I build bridges over boundaries and borders and cultures.” Elaborating, he offers, “I try to speak as a human”, for “we are one.” Moneka’s Iraqi-Sufi upbringing shapes his certainty that “there is God in all of us … there is a special soul and spirit in all of us. …We are all important. We all deserve to live in a better situation and be dignified as humans”.
Those convictions surface forcibly in King Gilgamesh, where he and LaVercombe challenge stereotypes — Jewish, Muslim, American, Iraqi — and find that shared empathy, rather than difference, is more fundamental. It is, he explains, the “same thing with Jesse and I. He’s American; I’m Iraqi. He’s white; I’m black. He’s Jewish. I’m Muslim. Honestly yes, there is war between our peoples … but we also have compassion” .
Through mythic spectacle and raw honesty, King Gilgamesh becomes a mirror: we see ancient gods, but also modern grief and laughter. We see epic failure, but also friendship in its purest form. And the show refuses tidy resolutions, instead preferring contradiction, fervour, and hope. And audiences inevitably respond to its vivid dynamism with intense emotion. To Moneka’s eyes, people walk out of performances transformed: “From the beginning, it’s almost like you want the show to finish.” That’s when “people ask, ‘who’s my best friend?’ As an artist, that’s what you dream of. People leave the show, and [feel] ‘ahhh, that’s the reason why I want to see theatre”.
And as for his future, Moneka is dreaming bigger. He dreams of bringing his story of exile, identity and family to film and television; of creating works that protect and elevate Brown voices; and of doing so with compassion, not resentment: “I want to come back to the screen. I want to create a movement that protects brown people…. And we need to work – all of us – as a whole …[to say] ‘Enough intimidating us!’ ‘Enough disrespecting us!’ But not in a very angry way. I want to create this in a very compassionate way” .
For our collective future, he believes, lies in understanding and appreciating our individual pasts: “What about compassion? What about the wisdom that we come from? As brown people, all of us came from real civilization – and there’s a lot of knowledge and wisdom!”.
King Gilgamesh & The Man of the Wild, directed by Seth Bockley and co-produced by Soulpepper and Tria Productions, runs until October 5, 2025 at Soulpepper’s Michael Young Theatre. Tickets are available at soulpepper.ca.
© Arpita Ghosal, Sesaya Arts Magazine 2025
