An Orchid and Other Such Lilies and Lies - Exclusive Reading

August 4, 2025
05:00 PM - 07:00 PM

        

Avenue Road Music and Performance Academy excited to be able to invite you to an exclusive glimpse into the future of the Avenue Road Music and Performance Academy.  As we begin building a substantial drama program to complement our dance and music streams, the Academy will be partnering with Dandelion Theatre to produce a brand new production by an emerging Toronto playwright.  The play is called An Orchid and Other Such Lilies and Lies by D. Halpern and stars Canadian theatre veterans Walter Borden and Scott Wentworth.  This play is an exciting glimpse into the future of Canadian theatre and we are excited to be on the front lines of progress in Canadian arts.

To that end, we would like to invite you to the first public reading of this play, being held in the Academy’s Gordon Lightfoot Concert Hall on Monday, August 4th from 5pm-7pm.  This reading will feature the show’s two stars, Stratford mainstay and Tony Award nominee Scott Wentworth and Canadian Theatre veteran and member of the Order of Canada Walter Borden.

We are currently in the early stages of production and are actively seeking partners to help us make our vision for this production a reality.  To that end, the playwright and I will speak briefly about certain perks and incentives which we would be more than happy to offer anyone willing to contribute to making this production a reality.  We hope you will join us in this foray into a new frontier of Canadian theatre.

Donor Tiers:

$100 Donor: Donor recognition in program, with two complimentary tickets to the show. 

$250 Donor: Donor recognition in program, two complimentary tickets to the show with reserved seating, choice of one Dandelion Theatre merchandise item (hat, shirt, or tote bag)

$500 Donor Hero:  Donor Hero recognition in program, four complimentary tickets plus reserved seating, choice of one Dandelion Theatre merchandise item (hat, shirt, or tote bag), Invitation for four to dress rehearsal and wine-reception

$1000 Leadership Donor : Donation Leadership recognition in program, , Four complimentary tickets plus reserved seating, choice of Dandelion Theatre merchandise item for each person in your party of four, invitation for four attendees to the dress rehearsal, pre-rehearsal reception and private meet and greet with cast & crew, free private coaching hour with Academy Head of School and Dandelion Theatre Artistic Director Max Ackerman for anyone you designate or gift it to.

But first, a little about the play:

An Orchid and Other Such Lilies and Lies is a journey two friends take together to end their lives on their own terms.  Our two characters - simply called One and Two - have been friends their whole lives and now, in their 80s, have decided to drive out into the middle of the desert, take as many drugs as their system can handle, and die.  It is a gorgeous, simple, haunting Beckettian meditation on love, grief, aging, and the ways in which we are remembered by the people we leave behind.  In discussing the play as a director I consider this a ghost story, not because it has any supernatural aspects, but because it explores what happens when you have known someone through lifetimes, and how the ghosts of their old selves continue to haunt them and their loved ones.  

 

About Dandelion Theatre: 

Dandelion Theatre is an award-winning independent Toronto theatre company whose mandate focuses on uplifting traditions of oral storytelling through immersive concepts.  Our goal as a company is to foster community and education through the sharing of stories over meals.  Previous productions include After Icarus (2021), The Sinai Sessions (2022), William Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale (2022), DEATH: a love story (2023), Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus (2023-2024), and Timon of Athens (2024).

 

About Walter Borden:

Walter Borden is an acclaimed Canadian actor, poet, and playwright with a career spanning over five decades. A veteran of the Stratford Festival, he has appeared in major productions including Othello, The Merchant of Venice, The Tempest, and All’s Well That Ends Well. His autobiographical one-man show Tightrope Time is a landmark work exploring Black and queer identity in Canada.

On screen, Borden’s credits include films such as Gerontophilia, John and the Missus, and Plato’s Reality Machine, as well as TV roles in Lexx, The Event, and This Hour Has 22 Minutes.

He is a Member of the Order of Canada, and has received the Queen Elizabeth II Golden Jubilee Medal, the Governor General’s Meritorious Service Medal, and honorary doctorates from Acadia University and the University of King's College.

 

About Scott Wentworth:

Scott Wentworth is a Tony Award–nominated actor, director, and playwright whose career spans Broadway, film, and over 27 seasons at Canada’s Stratford Festival. At Stratford, he has delivered acclaimed performances in roles such as Tevye (Fiddler on the Roof), Shylock (The Merchant of Venice), Macbeth (Macbeth), Mark Antony (Julius Ceasar), and Iago (Othello). On Broadway, his credits include Lost in Yonkers, Anna Karenina, and Welcome to the Club, for which he received a Tony nomination for Best Featured Actor in a Musical.

As a director, Wentworth has led major productions across North America, including Henry IV (Parts 1 and 2), Pericles, and Much Ado About Nothing. He is also the co-creator of the musical Enter the Guardsman, which was nominated for an Olivier Award for Best New Musical.

A master of both classical and contemporary work, Wentworth is widely regarded for his depth, range, and artistry on stage and beyond.

 

About D. Halpern:

D. Halpern is a Canada-based playwright and theatre artist. They are the co-founder of the BodyCube Arts Collective, which has had work appear throughout Canada, as well as in New York, Germany, and the Netherlands. Recent artistic writing credits include An Orchid and Other Such Lilies and Lies (BodyCube) at the 2019 Toronto and Atlantic Fringe Festivals and Donnelly, a puppet show which appeared in multiple venues across Halifax. Recent academic writing credits include “Subjecting an Object to Grief: The Puppet’s Co-Presence and the Experience of Mourning” at the Association for Theatre in Higher Education’s 2021 conference and “Queer (Hetero)topia: Transformations of Quotidian Spatiality and the Staging of Queer Space” at this year’s inaugural conference for the University of Alberta’s Gender and Social Justice department. Acting credits include Pentheus in The Bakkhai (University of Alberta), The Second Woman (Harbourfront Centre) at the 2019 Brave Festival, and the aforementioned productions of An Orchid... (BodyCube). Halpern graduated from the University of King’s College and Dalhousie University in 2016 with a combined honours in Theatre Studies and Contemporary Studies, and from the University of Alberta, with an MA in Drama with a focus on gender performativity as activism.  They are currently pursuing their PhD at york University.

 

We will see you at the reading!  Please register at the link below to book your spot.