World Premiere
AZAD (the rabbit and the wolf)
by Sona Tatoyan in collaboration with Jared Mezzocchi
directed by Jared Mezzocchi
featuring Sona Tatoyan, a tribe of Karagöz Puppets, and oud player Ara Dinkjian
a co-production with Hakawati NGO
Syrian-Armenian-American theatre and film artist Sona Tatoyan, stranded in her family’s abandoned Aleppo home during the Syrian war, discovers her great-great-grandfather’s handmade Karagöz shadow puppets, salvaged from the Armenian Genocide. Guided by the storyteller Scherazad, the puppets unveil bawdy, hilarious, and haunting tales that transport Sona through an intergenerational, psychedelic journey, alchemizing a radiant truth: stories, when reimagined, possess the power to transmute trauma to healing.
April 11, 2025 - May 3, 2025
Potrero Stage
1695 18th Street, San Francisco, CA
Tickets start at $20. No one is turned away for lack of funds.
The creative team for AZAD (the rabbit and the wolf) includes world-renowned oud player Ara Dinkjian, associate director Matthew B. Cullen, Karagöz creative consultant and puppet maker Ayhan Hulagu, puppet technician Veronica Dolginko, puppeteers Vinny Mraz, Kalli Siringas, and Fred C. Riley III, scenic and props designer Marcelo Martínez García, props master associate Imani Wilson, costume designer Valérie Thérèse Bart, costume associate & wardrobe supervisor Fatima Yahyaa, lighting designer Sinjin Jones, sound designer Evdoxia Ragkou, sound associate and engineer Eleanor Stalcup, sound A1 Elliott Orr, multimedia designer Camilla Tassi, immersive designer Isaac Saboohi, media associate Carl Erez, choreographer and movement designer Chelsea Didier, technical director Hector Zavala, stage manager Olivia Fletcher,andassistant stage manager Karen Runk. Aleppo footage and sound was captured by Antoine Makdis. Documentary Inserts were created by filmmaker Emily Jo West.
Golden Thread and Hakawati would like to thank producers Bill Pullman and Noubar and Anna Afeyan for their ongoing support and championing of this project.
Special Events
Torange Yeghiazarian moderates a conversation between Sona Tatoyan and renowned art historian Heghnar Zeitlian Watenpaugh
Sunday, April 20, 2025 at 4:30pm
Join us for a special post-show conversation with Sona Tatoyan and renowned art historian Heghnar Zeitlian Watenpaugh, moderated by Golden Thread founder and playwright Torange Yeghiazarian. This talkback will delve into the creative process and thematic inspirations behind AZAD (the rabbit and the wolf). Drawing on Watenpaugh’s groundbreaking work on “survivor objects”, which she defines as “artifacts that have experienced atrocities, even genocide, and survived”, the conversation will explore how material culture carries the weight of history and resilience, and how both stories and objects bear witness to survival.
Immediately following the matinee performance on Sunday, April 20.
Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day
Songs of the Unspoken: A Sound Journey of Remembrance
Thursday, April 24, 2025 at 9:45pm
Friday, April 25, 2025 at 9:45pm
Curated by Isaac Sabu, founder of Biotune (a wellness technology and protocol designed to address mental health and well-being), Songs of the Unspoken is an hour-long transformative experience blending neuro-frequencies, layered soundscapes, and live oud performance with world-renowned Ara Dinkjian.
A nurturing space where participants can process what was stirred up during AZAD (the rabbit and the wolf), find meaning in their personal experiences, and begin to transform pain into insight through the language of sound and resonance. This journey helps soothe the nervous system, unlock access to unspoken parts of the self, and guide guests into deeper states of awareness. It concludes with a 20-minute facilitated sharing circle or the option to express a written reflection on the communal #BeAzad Stories wall in the lobby.
Post-Show Panel: Healing Through Storytelling and Dialogue
Sunday, April 27, 2025 at 4:30pm
Join us for a special post-show panel exploring the theme of healing in AZAD (the rabbit and the wolf). This conversation will delve into the intersection of storytelling, personal and collective trauma, and the possibilities of healing.
The panel will feature playwright and performer Sona Tatoyan, psychotherapist Laura Farha from Wayfinder: Online Therapy for Expats, Immigrants, and Third Culture Grownups, and mindful self-compassion teacher Ojig Yeretsian and Burcu Tung of the Armenian-Turkish dialogue group, who bring vital perspectives on reconciliation and cross-cultural healing.
Moderated by Golden Thread’s Artistic Producer Salim Razawi, the discussion will take place immediately following the matinee performance on Sunday, April 27.
Story Circle with Aviva Arts
Thursday, May 1, 2025 at 9:30pm
Join Debórah Eliezer, Artistic Director of Aviva Arts and Affiliated Artist with Golden Thread in a community discussion inspired by Golden Thread’s production of AZAD (the rabbit and the wolf). Listen and share stories, ask questions, discuss this current moment, and make new friends. Come ready to learn the Story Circle model, a simple structure to democratize community storytelling.
Light refreshments provided. This event is free, but registration is required!
Artist Biographies
co-producer
Hakawati is a social justice vehicle working with communities that exist on the frontlines of suffering to catalyze radical change. Hakawati was founded by Syrian-Armenian-American actress/writer/producer Sona Tatoyan. With a passion for storytelling, human rights and transformation, Hakawati is driven to use the art of storytelling to heal. As a meeting place to witness trauma and support its alchemy towards inspiration and creativity, Hakawati aspires to empower the seemingly disempowered: to help un-silence the silenced and amplify the compassionate humanity of all of us.
We provide an empowering platform that facilitates the creative talent of refugees and marginalized people through development labs in film, theater, and other storytelling modalities, along with creating indigenous theater and film productions. Hakawati works with, and employs people from within these local communities whenever possible – to tell stories by people from the places and spaces where the story originates. We work to preserve cultures under threat, mentor artists in frontline communities, and support refugee storytelling within displaced communities.
Sona Tatoyan
writer, performer
Sona Tatoyan
Sona Tatoyan is a first generation Syrian-Armenian-American actor/writer/producer and founder of Hakawati, a non-profit storytelling vehicle focusing on elevating the voices of frontline and marginalized communities.
As actress, stage credits include world premieres at Yale Repertory Theatre, The Goodman Theatre, The American Conservatory Theatre and others. She starred in The Journey, the first American independent film shot in Armenia (winner, Audience Award Milan Film Festival, 2002).
As writer, her first feature film script, The First Full Moon, was a 2011 Sundance/RAWI Screenwriters Lab participant and 2012 Dubai Film Connection/Festival Project.
As a writer and actress, Ms. Tatoyan created the storytelling piece Azad, performing most recently at the University of Michigan Keene Theater, Clark University and at the Pergamon Museum in Berlin. She created the multimedia play Azad (the rabbit and the wolf) with two time Obie Award winning director/multimedia designer Jared Mezzocchi, and producer Bill Pullman. Development residencies: the Vineyard theater in NYC, inaugural University of Connecticut Global Affairs Digital Media residency May 2023, Harvard Artlab September 2023 and Wake Forest University Character and Leadership February 2024.
Speaking engagements include: “Storytelling as Spiritual Vehicle: A response to the Armenian Genocide and Syrian Refugee Crisis” at The Brandenburger Gate Foundation, Berlin; “Trauma, Magic, Love: Being in Aleppo with Karagöz Puppets, My Ancestors and the Spirit of Osman Kavala” at CMES Harvard University; and “Paradox and Liberation: Bones, Puppets, and Psychdelic Journeys in the Play of Identity” as the 2024 Distinguished Haidostian Lecture at the Center for Armenian Studies at the University of Michigan. She is a Georgetown Global Politics and Performance Lab Fellow, 2024-26.
Ms. Tatoyan is a graduate of Wake Forest University (B.A. in English/Theater), where she was mentored by Dr. Maya Angelou.
Jared Mezzocchi
director
Jared Mezzocchi
Jared Mezzocchi is a two-time Obie Award-winning theater artist, working as a director, multimedia designer, playwright, and actor. Based out of New York, Mezzocchi’s work has appeared at notable theaters nationwide, including Playwrights Horizons, Vineyard Theater, The Kennedy Center, Geffen Playhouse, Arena Stage, Woolly Mammoth (company member), and many more. In 2016, he received the Lucille Lortel and Henry Hewes Award for his work in Qui Nguyen’s Vietgone at the Manhattan Theatre club. In 2020, the New York Times spotlighted his multimedia innovations alongside the pandemic work of four other theater artists, including Andrew Lloyd Webber and Paula Vogel. His work on Sarah Gancher’s digital production of Russian Troll Farm was also celebrated as a New York Times critic pick, and praised for being one of the first digitally native successes for virtual theater. In 2023, this digital production of Russian Troll Farm won Mezzocchi his second Obie. Most recently, Mezzocchi directed The Wind and The Rain: a Story about Sunny’s Bar at En Garde Arts and Vineyard Theater which was performed on a barge in NYC and called “Highbrow Brilliant” by New York Magazine. In Spring 2024, Mezzocchi directed Sandra at TheaterWorks Hartford and was accepted, as a writer/performer, into the 2024 Colorado New Play Festival for his work 73 Seconds directed by Aya Ogawa and commissioned by En Garde Arts.
Mezzocchi is a two-time Macdowell Artist Fellow, a 2012 Princess Grace Award winner, and recently celebrated his retirement at The University of Maryland, where he taught in the MFA Design program for the projection and multimedia track, a curriculum he created in 2012.
Over the pandemic, Mezzocchi founded Virtual Design Collective (VIDCO), which has aided in the development of over 50 new digital works over the 18 months of quarantine. This year, he is finishing his book, A Multimedia Designer’s Method to Theatrical Storytelling, which will be published through Routledge. Mezzocchi has a BA in theater and film from Fairfield University, and an MFA in performance and interactive media arts from Brooklyn College.