Practice

A ten-actor production of Shakespeare's comedy for the Sheridan/UTM Theatre & Drama Studies classical project. The production uses a deliberately spare visual world and an ensemble-led rehearsal process to move between Athens, the forest and the mechanicals' performance.

Playwright

William Shakespeare

Organization / presenter

Sheridan College / University of Toronto Mississauga

A gathering of contemporary dance from British Columbia, bringing performances and conversations with local artists together with visiting presenters and dance professionals.

Organization / presenter

The Dance Centre

A promenade production of María Irene Fornés's play with the graduating Theatre & Drama Studies acting class at University of Toronto Mississauga/Sheridan. The audience moved through the building as the play's simultaneous scenes unfolded around them.

Playwright

María Irene Fornés

Organization / presenter

University of Toronto Mississauga / Sheridan

A collectively created production with the third-year acting class of the University of Toronto Mississauga/Sheridan Theatre & Drama Studies program. I co-created and directed the work.

Created by

Brian Postalian and the third-year Theatre & Drama Studies acting class

Organization / presenter

University of Toronto Mississauga / Sheridan

A shadow-puppet response to Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet, developed through Precursor Lab in collaboration with the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra and performed with live orchestra.

Created by

Precursor Lab; music by Sergei Prokofiev

Organization / presenter

Precursor Lab / Vancouver Symphony Orchestra

Two Re:Current Theatre contributions to HIVE: Untitled Project (2019), an intimate encounter for one audience member with a series of objects, and The Marker of Nothing (2021), a digital participatory performance exploring zero and nothingness. Presented within HIVE’s wider programs of micro-performances.

Created by

2019 — Untitled Project: Brian Postalian, Pascal Reiners and Jackie Rowland. 2021 — The Marker of Nothing: Brian Postalian, Stefan Nazarevich and Meagan Woods.

Organization / presenter

HIVE Performance Collective

Venue

Presentation House Theatre (2019) · Online (2021)

A one-on-one performance contained in a custom deck of cards. The project moved between live performance, an at-home version and a later virtual-reality experiment created with Howard Dai.

Created by

Brian Postalian; VR version with Howard Dai

Organization / presenter

Re:Current Theatre

An immersive game of statistics that asked a room of strangers to make choices, compare themselves with one another and watch how quickly those choices could become a worldview.

Created by

Brian Postalian and the ensemble

Organization / presenter

Re:Current Theatre

An adaptation of Ibsen’s The Wild Duck with Re:Current Theatre, exploring the stories a family needs to believe and what happens when someone insists on exposing the truth.

Adapted from

The Wild Duck by Henrik Ibsen

Organization / presenter

Re:Current Theatre

Venue

hub14, Toronto

A multimedia solo work created with writer/performer Jackie Rowland, blending live performance, storytelling and media in a coming-out story for the questioning and unsure.

Created by

Brian Postalian and Jackie Rowland

Organization / presenter

Re:Current Theatre / In the Soil Festival

Venue

Oddfellows Temple, St. Catharines

A large-scale site-specific immersive musical created by Julie Tepperman and Mitchell Cushman with Sheridan College. Audiences moved through the former Brantwood School as different stories unfolded throughout the building.

Created by

Mitchell Cushman and Julie Tepperman

Organization / presenter

Sheridan College

Venue

Former Brantwood Public School, Oakville

A contemporary dance work choreographed by Kay Huang. I worked on the project as dramaturg.

Choreographer

Kay Huang

Organization / presenter

Kay Huang

A contemporary dance work choreographed by Tomoyo Yamada. I worked on the project as dramaturg.

Choreographer

Tomoyo Yamada

Organization / presenter

Clala Dance Project

A solo performance about a man searching for something he has lost. An Armenian folktale, family history and the difficulty of writing a play become tangled in his search.

Created and performed by

Brian Postalian

Organization / presenter

Rhubarb Festival / Impulse Theatre’s Second Peek

A short outdoor play by Alyssa Hirose, performed by two actors as part of Or Festival’s POP! Summer Strolls at Darts Hill Garden Park.

Playwright

Alyssa Hirose

Organization / presenter

Or Festival

Venue

Darts Hill Garden Park

A murder mystery farce adapted from the film and board game: a group of guests arrives at a mansion, and everyone becomes a suspect. Produced with UBC MedPlay.

Playwright

Sandy Rustin; based on the screenplay by Jonathan Lynn, with additional material by Hunter Foster and Eric Price

Organization / presenter

UBC MedPlay

Venue

UBC Medical Student & Alumni Centre

Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’s reworking of Everyman follows a person asked to account for their life when Death arrives. A lottery determines who plays Everybody each night.

Playwright

Branden Jacobs-Jenkins

Organization / presenter

UBC MedPlay

Venue

UBC Medical Student & Alumni Centre

Michel Marc Bouchard’s play follows a man attending his lover’s funeral at the family farm, where grief and desire collide with the family’s refusal to acknowledge their relationship.

Playwright

Michel Marc Bouchard; translated by Linda Gaboriau

Organization / presenter

Simon Fraser University

Venue

Goldcorp Centre for the Arts, Studio D

A family drama by Kelley Anderson about strained family ties, adolescence and the difficulty of trusting the people closest to you.

Playwright

Kelley Anderson

Organization / presenter

Theatre by Committee

Venue

Glad Day Bookshop, Toronto

Chekhov’s one-act comedy begins with a creditor confronting a grieving widow over an unpaid debt. Their argument takes an unexpected turn.

Playwright

Anton Chekhov

Organization / presenter

Beck Festival / University of Toronto Mississauga

Venue

MiST Theatre, University of Toronto Mississauga

Oscar Wilde’s Salomé places desire, religious conviction and political power in the court of Herod, where Salomé becomes fixated on the imprisoned prophet Jokanaan.

Playwright

Oscar Wilde

Organization / presenter

University of Toronto Mississauga Drama Club

Venue

MiST Theatre, University of Toronto Mississauga

David Ives turns a visit to a bakery into a comic piece of musical repetition, with ordinary words and encounters looping into unexpected patterns.

Playwright

David Ives

Organization / presenter

Beck Festival / University of Toronto Mississauga

Venue

MiST Theatre, University of Toronto Mississauga

A devised physical theatre performance built from verbatim stories with the Kitchener-Waterloo Youth Theatre company, presented at the Registry Theatre.

Created by

The Kitchener-Waterloo Youth Theatre company

Organization / presenter

Kitchener-Waterloo Youth Theatre

Venue

Registry Theatre, Kitchener

A new play written in twelve hours and rehearsed in the next twelve for EVN 24 at HighFest in Yerevan. Created with Nina Romá Agvanian, it began with a shared quotation as a prompt.

Created by

Nina Romá Agvanian and Brian Postalian

Organization / presenter

EVN 24 Theatre / High Fest International Performing Arts Festival

Venue

Studio 20, Yerevan

An immersive music and theatre event that opened the Orpheum beyond its stage. Audiences moved through stairways, backstage spaces and balconies to encounter performances and installations.

Conceived by

Benton Roark; theatrical direction by Cole Lewis

Organization / presenter

Redshift Music Society

Venue

Orpheum Theatre, Vancouver

A performance combining verbatim text and dance at Simon Fraser University, co-directed by Steven Hill and Rob Kitsos. I worked as assistant director.

Co-directors

Steven Hill and Rob Kitsos

Organization / presenter

Simon Fraser University

Venue

Milton Wong Theatre, Goldcorp Centre for the Arts

A solo performance by Adam Lazarus and Guillermo Verdecchia in which an anti-oppression workshop becomes the setting for a darkly comic encounter with prejudice and defensiveness.

Created by

Adam Lazarus and Guillermo Verdecchia

Organization / presenter

Factory Theatre

Venue

Factory Studio Theatre, Toronto

A musical cabaret by Alistair Newton that brings Leigh Bowery and Lady Gaga into conversation about fame, performance and the boundaries between high and popular culture.

Created by

Alistair Newton

Organization / presenter

Buddies in Bad Times Theatre

A musical satire of corporate ambition, following window washer J. Pierrepont Finch as he uses a self-help book to climb the company ladder.

Writers

Music and lyrics by Frank Loesser; book by Abe Burrows, Jack Weinstock and Willie Gilbert

Organization / presenter

Toronto Youth Theatre

Shakespeare’s comedy of lovers, fairies and amateur actors losing their way in the woods. This Toronto Youth Theatre production was directed by Neil Silcox.

Playwright

William Shakespeare

Organization / presenter

Toronto Youth Theatre

A one-act dramedy by Kai Taddei, developed with Vino Buono at Intrepid Theatre Studio. I worked as dramaturg.

Playwright

Kai Taddei

Organization / presenter

Vino Buono

Venue

Intrepid Theatre Studio, Victoria

A festival of six new ten-minute plays by local writers at Little Mountain Gallery, bringing short works from the page into performance.

Organization / presenter

Pull Festival

Venue

Little Mountain Gallery, Vancouver

An electronic opera presented by Queer Arts Festival at the Roundhouse Theatre. I worked on the project as dramaturg.

Organization / presenter

Queer Arts Festival

Venue

Roundhouse Theatre, Vancouver

A workshop of Andrew Barrett’s work combining physical theatre and dance, developed with Impulse Theatre. I worked as dramaturg.

Created by

Andrew Barrett

Organization / presenter

Impulse Theatre

A dance duet with an object, choreographed by Meagan Woods and performed at Simon Fraser University. I performed as a dancer in the work.

Choreographer

Meagan Woods

Organization / presenter

Simon Fraser University

Venue

Goldcorp Centre for the Arts, Studio T

Devised physical theatre with objects by Patrick Blenkarn. The work uses books and bodies to explore order, labour and knowledge. I was part of the performing ensemble.

Conceived and directed by

Patrick Blenkarn

Organization / presenter

Simon Fraser University

Venue

Goldcorp Centre for the Arts, Studio D

Three Armenian diaspora artists from Canada, Jordan and the United States meet in Armenia for the first time. Together they make a performance about belonging, missing histories and where to begin.

Created by

Aram Atamian, Brian Postalian and Apo Yaghmourian

Organization / presenter

Birthright Armenia

Venue

Birthright Armenia Studio

A four-hour interactive installation in which visitors helped reconstruct the lives of my ancestors. Inspired by my late grandparents, the work invited people to share memories and connect with their own family histories.

Created by

Brian Postalian

Organization / presenter

Whitehorse Nuit Blanche

Venue

(Co)space, Whitehorse

An audience-participation project in development with Pandemic Theatre, using the structure of baseball to explore an asylum seeker’s journey through borders, paperwork, waiting and hearings. Players make choices as resources and circumstances change.

Organization / presenter

Pandemic Theatre

A work in development with Jackie Rowland and Re:Current Theatre: hundreds of short plays confront fear of climate change, catastrophe and uncertainty, as we race to tell a story about an ending we cannot avoid.

Created by

Brian Postalian and Jackie Rowland

Organization / presenter

Re:Current Theatre

An outdoor winter performance for families, combining music, mask, clown and puppetry. Five urban raccoons must work together to save the winter solstice. In development for Theatre Direct’s 2026/27 season.

Created by

Morgan Brie Johnson and Alexandra Simpson / Animacy Theatre Collective

Organization / presenter

Theatre Direct