Think, for a moment, about your last take-out meal. Who cooked it? Do they call this country home? What is their life like? You likely don’t know the answers to these questions – but if you did, you just might find yourself in a complex and commonly hidden world like the one brought to life in Behind the Moon.
This latest production at Teesri Duniya’s Rangshala Studio offers a glimpse into intersections of the personal and the political in the diasporic dining industry. Written by Anosh Irani and directed by Chelsea Dab Hilke, the play presents the stories of three immigrant men as they intersect at an Indo-Persian restaurant in Toronto.
Taxi driver Jalal (Aladeen Tawfeek) comes into the Mughlai Moon restaurant after hours on a stormy night, claiming an urgent need to eat food from home. Ayub, the restaurant’s harried sole employee (played by Adolyn H. Dar), tries to turn him away, but eventually relents and offers Jalal a meal. Over the days that follow, a friendship develops between Ayub and Jalal, which enables Ayub to assess his situation, confront his demanding boss Qadir Bhai (Andrew Joseph Richardson), and reclaim his life.
The play shines for its lived-in setting and compelling characters. Behind the Moon is a chamber drama: like Ayub’s life in Canada, it largely unfolds within the confines of the restaurant. The set, thoughtfully designed by Diana Uribe, instantly recalls a modest desi restaurant, with golden decorative motifs and evocative prints on the walls. Dar holds his own as Ayub, articulating the character’s mounting neuroses through increasingly tense gestures, as the plot builds. Meanwhile, Richardson is captivating as the exuberant and pontificating small-business owner Qadir . He preaches patience and prosperity gospel to his subordinate, whose passport and salary he withholds, ostensibly for safekeeping. Yet the character is not without vulnerability, as when he recounts his past hardships as a construction labourer, and cautions an overworked Ayub not to build his fortune on the suffering of others. Richardson interprets Qadir with such earnestness that one supposes the character to be in denial about his exploitation of his fellow countryman. Contrasting the buoyancy of Richardson’s Qadir, Tawfeek brings a solemn, guarded presence to Jalal, the mysterious architect-turned-cab-driver, whose professional ambition cost him his family.
My companion at the play astutely observed how, in an era of rising Hindutva (a far-right Hindu nationalist ideology with global repercussions for Indian religious minorities), it is especially meaningful that this work centres Muslim Indian characters. This is not a matter of chance: their faith is integral to their identities, as evidenced in Qadir’s praise of his good fortune, Ayub’s prayers, and Jalal’s dream of designing a mosque and his vision of his wife and daughter as muezzins (religious officials who make the call to prayer).
Notably, all three characters are fathers. As a child immigrant from a working-class family, I found myself intrigued by the families of Behind the Moon, whose stories unfold entirely offstage. While the families’ absence serves to illustrate Ayub and Jalal’s isolation, one wonders if Ayub’s decision to stay or return home might not have been simplified by the simple act of calling and consulting his wife. This question is made all the more palpable by the fact that Qadir Bhai gives Ayub a secondhand iPhone in the play’s first act.
Moments of pithy dialogue, paired with Dab Hilke’s solid direction, bring these three fathers to life. “To get something, you have to lose something.” Qadir expounds, “That’s what immigration does. It takes away. It takes away … and how.” The play offers a handful of memorable phrases such as this, which Teesri Duniya’s media team has mobilized to great effect. Irani’s writing is also richly intertextual. Behind the Moon draws on the author’s earlier work, such as a short story by the same name published in the LA Review of Books and his play The Men in White (2017), as well as on the work of 10th-century Persian poet Kisa’i Marvazi, which is cited in translation.
At times, however, this attention to the literary encumbers the work with an excess of stylistic devices and flourishes. Metaphors, personifications, and motifs accumulate without consequence, detracting from the genuine power of the story. For instance, the work opens on a motif of light and mirrors: Ayub expresses dismay at the customers’ habit of touching the display case, while he meticulously wipes its glass. Qadir repeatedly demands that the floor tiles be polished to a mirror-like shine. Meanwhile, the Moon, a cosmic mirror, looms brightly above. But what first appears to be a subtle extended metaphor—for light as truth and a source of refracted appearances—is shattered by the sheer number of unrelated metaphors that follow. Jalal’s taxi is christened and personified. A gifted handmade rug comes to represent both care and obligation. At various times, the characters are likened to a deer, a tree, and a rat. And with the exception of an unseen rodent that recurrently threatens the future of the restaurant, these images exit the stage as quickly as they arrive, without ever coalescing into greater meaning.
These concerns aside, Behind the Moon offers vividly realized and compelling characters, and relays a touching, timely story with evident care. As a work of political theatre, Behind the Moon succeeds in shining a light on the exploitation of undocumented migrant workers in Canada with empathy and tact. Indeed, the play prompted me to reflect critically on my own ignorance about the ubiquity of such labour abuse. I rarely eat out, but when I do, I now find myself more pointedly inquiring about the business and its employees – and whether my tip will reach the worker who earned it.
Behind the Moon ran at Teesri Duniya’s Rangshala Studio in Montreal from April 3–19, 2026.
© Liuba de Armas, Sesaya Arts Magazine 2026
