{"id":125552,"date":"2026-06-30T15:12:47","date_gmt":"2026-06-30T19:12:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/?p=125552"},"modified":"2026-06-30T15:12:47","modified_gmt":"2026-06-30T19:12:47","slug":"interview-maryem-tollar-roula-said-anand-rajaram-talk-book-ooka-immaculate-misconception-toronto-fringe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/2026\/06\/30\/interview-maryem-tollar-roula-said-anand-rajaram-talk-book-ooka-immaculate-misconception-toronto-fringe\/","title":{"rendered":"INTERVIEW | Maryem Tollar, Roula Said & Anand Rajaram Talk About Book of Ooka: The Immaculate Misconception At Toronto Fringe"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Actors
Actors and show creators Roula Said (L); Anand Rajaram (Middle) & Maryem Tollar (R) (Photo courtesy of the artists)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The \u201cDivas of Disruption\u201d\u2014 JUNO-nominated Maryem Tollar and Roula Said \u2014 make a return to Toronto Fringe with their new genre-defying comedy Book of Ooka: The Immaculate Misconception. The show follows their successful 2025 Fringe run of Very Shady Arab Ladies.<\/p>\n

The new production features a mix of physical comedy and live music, incorporating traditional Arabic melodies, and more.<\/p>\n

The Story<\/h2>\n

Best friends Maryem and Roula operate a shawarma shop in Toronto. Roula\u2019s 78-year-old virgin Auntie Ooka (Anand Rajaram, also co-writer and director), comes to her with the story of being visited in her dreams by celestial spirits who tell her she has become divinely pregnant, and needs to go home to Bethlehem to give birth.<\/p>\n

Maryem and Roula come up with a plan, and with Auntie Ooka in tow, they travel from Toronto to the River Jordan to fulfill this divine quest.<\/p>\n

Book of Ooka centres what they\u2019ve dubbed \u201cHag Energy\u201d\u2014 the power of older women of colour. The story is back by live music, featuring an ensemble made up of Ernie Tollar, Joska Tollar, Yvette Tollar, and Omneya Tollar.<\/p>\n

The story builds a \u201cpeaceful theatrical bridge\u201d between Toronto and the Middle East, tackling heavy topics thoughtfully, with laughs, and a sense of joy.<\/p>\n

LV caught up with Maryem Tollar, Roula Said, and Anand Rajaram to talk about the show.<\/p>\n

The Performers<\/h2>\n

Palestinian-Canadian artist Roula Said<\/strong> is a musician and poet, as well as an actor. Roula sings and plays qanun, piano and percussion to accompany original songs created from Palestinian poetry and her sufi-inspired poems, and sings traditional Arabic songs with her women\u2019s drums and voice band, Tabiba.<\/p>\n

Maryem Tollar<\/strong> was born in Cairo, and came to Halifax, Nova Scotia with her family at the age of one. She is known as a singer as well as an actress, performing Arabic songs, often with her husband Ernie Tollar, an acclaimed musician and composer. She sang on CBC\u2019s \u201cLittle Mosque on the Prairie\u201d theme, and A.R. Rahman\u2019s Bollywood hit \u201cMayya Mayya\u201d. Maryem has also collaborated with ensembles such as Tafelmusik and the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra. She received the Johanna Metcalf Prize for Performing Arts in 2019.<\/p>\n

FAOC<\/strong> is the company launched by Roula and Maryem during the pandemic. The two friends would take walks and mimic their mothers\u2019 Arabic accents. The pair began to film short clips, which became so popular on social media that they decided to expand their ideas. It resulted in Beige Christmas, their first live theatre show, in 2024, and in 2025, the Fringe hit Very Shady Arab Ladies.<\/p>\n

Improviser, actor, playwright, director, musician, teacher & puppeteer HRH Anand Rajaram<\/strong> is a two-time Dora Award winner for best performance (Buffoon by Anosh Irani and Mustard by Kat Sandler). He adapted and performed in a production of Rohinton Mistry\u2019s The Scream, at SummerWorks (Winner Best Production). He has performed at Second City, Stratford, CanStage, VideoCabaret, among other theatrical companies, and has appeared in many films and TV shows. Anand is also known as a voiceover artist for video games and cartoons, and appears as an occasional panellist on CBC Radio\u2019s Because News.<\/p>\n

\"Actors
Actors and show creators Maryem Tollar (L) and Roula Said (R) (Photo: Cathy Ord)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

HRH Anand Rajaram, Roula Said, Maryem Tollar: The Interview<\/h2>\n

How did the new show come together?<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel like there’s a lot of streams that feed into it,\u201d Roula begins. \u201cI believe, as we were deciding about whether we’d do another installation of FAOC at the Fringe, I was doing a bit of a dive into Gnosticism, and thinking about those deep stories of the cosmology of the world that I grew up with. And, finding ways to see what, of those teaching and of those stories, what I resonated with, and what I don’t.\u201d<\/p>\n

She likens the process to throwing out the bathwater without throwing out the baby too.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are things that I received, and the way that I was raised \u2014 I was raised as a Christian Palestinian,\u201d Said notes. \u201cI had formed values that I continue to build on and resonate with the world, and thing that I don’t align with.\u201d<\/p>\n

Those are the thoughts she brought into their initial conversations, which brought the discussion to those deep stories we grow up with, and how they shape us. \u201cHow we work with ideas about what is inspiration, what is received, and what is scientific and provable. What is crazy and what is inspired,\u201d she explains.<\/p>\n

As artists, she points out, rote learning from books is not the only means to shaping practice. Often it\u2019s also dreams and meditations that spark inspiration.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhere I started with this was the provocation that there is a right to return, and Ooka is 78, and we want her to get home before she passes away,\u201d Anand says.<\/p>\n

The trick was to find ways to get her there. \u201cMaybe she has a dream and believes she is pregnant with the messiah,\u201d Rajaram adds. \u201cIt started with this premise, how do we contextualize how to get her back given the politics that is there.\u201d<\/p>\n

As he points out, that politics is in a state of constant development. \u201cWe didn\u2019t know how things would be by the time the show came up.\u201d The solution was to create a flexible framework for the story. \u201cTo have an open enough framework that the story can fit in kind of regardless of how things are going there,\u201d he continues.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are situated it as kind of fantasy,\u201d Anand explains, \u201ca dream on top of a fantasy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Toronto Fringe audiences, the trio felt, would already be well informed on the Middle East situation from the constant stream of news. \u201cThe audiences is probably hip, and probably exhausted from the amount of information that is constantly coming in from what is going on there,\u201d Rajaram acknowledges. The story adds a different dimension, without talking about what the audience already knows.<\/p>\n

As Said explains, the issue of returning home in fraught political circumstances is very real for many immigrant Canadians. \u201cI really had a bad experience with my own grandmother when we came to Canada,\u201d Roula relates. When her grandmother became ill and wanted to go back, it raised a whole set of problems and obstacles.<\/p>\n

The World of FAOC<\/h3>\n

\u201cThis is our fourth project working together,\u201d Anand says. The company produced a radio show in addition to the three on-stage performances. \u201cWith each collaboration, we all find our own way into it.\u201d<\/p>\n

The ideas come via various means.<\/p>\n

\u201cSometimes it\u2019s a question that we’ve been trying to unpack,\u201d he explains.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe do feel like we’re creating kind of our own world,\u201d Said adds. Book of Ooka is a kind of sequel to last year\u2019s Very Shady Arab Ladies. \u201cIt\u2019s just been interesting, because there\u2019s a character, kind of our big bad guy, who makes a return.\u201d<\/p>\n

The company is building a world around the distinctive characters they create.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt has more creative potential, but it’s being cooked in this kind of organic way,\u201d Said explains. \u201cWe’re really finding sweet nuggets as we go. Maryam’s entire family is now part of the show,\u201d she laughs. \u201cIt happens through relationship and interconnection.\u201d<\/p>\n