Side Theatre
Festival.
Three days of new Iranian diaspora theatre
Six original works, written and performed by the people who lived them, premiere at Concordia University’s EV Building — the first festival of its kind in the city.
A stage for stories
Hive Theatre presents the first edition of the Side Theatre Festival, a three-day festival dedicated to theatre by the Iranian diaspora. From Friday, November 27 to Sunday, November 29, 2026, six new works will be performed at Concordia University’s EV Building in downtown Montréal. A series of workshops throughout November leads up to the performances.
The festival is built for artists who rarely find a place on Canadian stages: immigrants, refugees, people of colour, and those working outside grant systems and established theatre programming. It is the first festival in Montréal devoted entirely to Iranian diaspora theatre.
Lived. Written. Performed.
Each work is written, directed and performed by its creator. None of the participating artists work in the arts, and almost none have attended art school. Their pieces come from their own lives: leaving home, arriving somewhere new, and carrying both places at once.
Over the past months, the festival’s mentor and artistic director, Syd Hamidreza Hosseini, has worked closely with each artist as dramaturg, helping turn personal stories into finished pieces for the stage.
“These artists didn’t come to theatre through institutions. They came to it because they had something they needed to say. The Side Theatre Festival exists so those stories have a stage, and so the people telling them are treated as artists.”
Syd Hamidreza Hosseini, mentor and artistic director
Six new works
Restless Leg Syndrome
Hamed Sadat BarikaniRecovery
Amir PakdelDiyari
Darya RabbaniWhere Is This Place
Sara Fallahinoname
Mina Zaghari (Toronto)Unknown
Narges Bagheri (Ottawa)Meet the artists
Mina Zaghari
noname
Darya Rabbani
Diyari
Sara Fallahi
Where Is This Place?
Amir Pakdel
Recovery
Hamed Barikani
Restless Leg Syndrome
Space to explore
Writing in Diaspora
With Maryam Hashempour
Writing in Grief of Loss
With Keivan Sarreshteh
Thinking About a Place
With Iliya Giahchi
Acting as Living
With Mohammadreza Aliakbari
Dates, times and registration details will be announced soon.
Syd Hamidreza Hosseini
Mentor & artistic director
Syd Hamidreza Hosseini is a Montréal-based theatre practitioner and part-time faculty member in Concordia University’s Theatre Department. Working at the intersection of performance and technology, he is the founder of the CyberShakespeare collective, which has brought performances to audiences in the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Iran, Sweden and Canada.
In Montréal, he founded the Hive Theatre collective that presented Destroyed in 2025 and Viraf2.0 in 2026. He has presented his work at festivals including the Edinburgh International Film Festival and MUTEK Forum.
The practical things
- When
- Friday, November 27 to Sunday, November 29, 2026 — show times to be announced
- Where
- EV Building, Concordia University, 1515 Sainte-Catherine Street West, Montréal — room to be announced
- Tickets
- To be announced
- Language
- To be announced
The Side Theatre Festival is made possible by Concordia University.
Syd Hamidreza Hosseini
Artistic Director, Hive Theatre
Interviews, photos and rehearsal access available on request.