King Gilgamesh & The Man of the Wild is a one-act theatre-music production that fuses a scripted play featuring actor-musicians Ahmed Moneka and Jesse LaVercombe with live performance by Ahmed’s acclaimed Arabic-maqam / jazz band, Moneka Arabic Jazz. 

The play traces the friendship of “Ahmed” and “Jesse” as they meet in a Canadian coffee shop and forge a bond while confronting their differences – one Jewish, one Muslim, and each born in the shadow of the first Gulf War between the USA and Iraq. The present-day story of friendship interweaves with moments from the ancient Mesopotamian Epic of Gilgamesh. The play, co-created with director Seth Bockley, features themes of art, sex, fatherhood, mortality, and identity.

The play’s action is accompanied throughout by the emotional, rousing, and world-spanning music of Moneka Arabic Jazz, whose members hail from countries around the globe (Algeria, Sudan, Greece, Iraq, and Canada). Their music scores the show’s physical, expressive, playful, and intimate theatricality, erupting into a full musical set at the culmination of the play’s narrative, which traces Ahmed’s real evolution from an actor-refugee in a new country to an acclaimed musician at the top of his game.

The two-man epic spans centuries, cultures, and continents, illuminating the mysteries of love, death, and friendship in a moving, funny, tragic, and ultimately celebratory “play with music” that appeals to theatre and music audiences alike.