Embedded Files
Selected Past Works
Selected Past Works
2013 — 2025
Selected works from 15+ productions (2013–present) across Iran, the UAE, Canada, and the United States, including 50+ stage roles and 100+ crew contributions across acting, directing, design, and production.
These works resist a fixed notion of diaspora, unfolding through a dialogue between origin and displacement. Languages, geographies, and performance traditions intersect, where histories converge and absence actively shapes presence.
At the core of these works lies a sustained practice of collaboration, where actors and creative teams have engaged in close dialogue to shape performances that are honest, intimate, and formally exploratory. Through this collective process, each production has emerged as a shared space of inquiry, grounded in trust, responsiveness, and a commitment to developing new expressive possibilities. This practice has also engaged audiences as active participants, fostering the formation of a critical and dynamic community through ongoing dialogue and exchange.
Hold Me, Damn It, Just Hold Me!
Written and directed by Ali Foumani
Cast:
Bahar Modanloo, Abouzar Kaboudian, Samaneh Bagherzadeh, Zara Torki, Ali Darvish, Ali Seyfi, Elly Konjkav, Kiana Kashani, Sara Sanadgol, Vahid Rezaei, Ahmad Mousavi, Amir Jadali, Sara Pourzal
Photo & Videography: Danial Rad
Graphic & Motion Design: Mahsa Malek
Sound Design by Ali Foumani
Incorporating musical pieces by Katarina Gubanova (Ukraine) and JUMA (Iran), with their kind permission and support.
Produced by Ali Seyfi
June 2025
Vienna, Virginia, USA
Hold Me, Damn It, Just Hold Me! takes flight on the wings of The Siberian Crane, an earlier work by the same author. This play is an unavoidable metamorphosis from monologue to dialogue, a moment in which solitary voices move toward one another and transform into conversation. The characters react to enforced silence and systematic erasure by invoking the silenced. They engage with the absent, resist forgetting, and revive erased memories within the theatrical space.
The Siberian Crane
by Ali Foumani
Play Reading & Book Signing
Presented by RIG-T-ART in cooperation with The Iranian Graduate Student Foundation at the University of Maryland (UMD)
IGSF Theater Club
Performed by Bahar Modanloo, Abouzar Kaboudian, Samaneh Bagherzadeh, Ali Darvish, Elham (Elly) Konjkav, Fatemeh Sheikhsaran, Parham Kabirifar
Opening Narration by Abouzar Kaboudian
Original Poster adapted from the book cover design by Mohammad Ghaemi (published by Asemana Books)
Archival Poster by Ali Foumani
July 13, 2024
Vienna, Virginia, USA
The Siberian Crane unfolds across twelve scenes, weaving four stories in which monologues strive to become dialogue. It follows a solitary voice, Omid, the last survivor of the western population of Siberian cranes, who journeyed alone to Iran for fifteen years after losing his mate, Arezoo. In Persian, Omid means hope. The Siberian Crane is a memory of hope, a story of women who do not give up.
I Am Walking on Air
Written and directed by Ali Foumani
Performers:
Behzad Gholami
Azita Mohajeri
Choreographer: Behzad Gholami
Sound Design by Ali Foumani
Photo by Samaneh Bagherzadeh, Saiedeh B.T.
Stage Manager: Samaneh Bagherzadeh
Archival Poster by Ali Foumani
November 2023
Agricola Lutheran Church, Toronto, Canada
This performance confronts the historical inheritance of religion in the invention of torture. Through a performative experiment grounded in Orphic soundscapes, the audience is drawn into unstable layers of the unconscious. Born from political arrest and inner confession, the work condenses lived trauma into a physical ritual, asking where prayer ends and pain begins, and how faith and violence become entwined within a gendered body marked by power.
How shall I drive those 99,999 diseases away from you?
Written by Sara Shirazi & Ali Foumani
Directed by Ali Foumani
Performed by Sara Shirazi
Dramaturge: Saeid Karimian
Costume and Makeup Design by Samaneh Bagherzadeh
Makeup by Marieh Mehrabi
Music by Majid Kiani, Mohammad Narimani, Mohammad Yekta
Lighting Design by Saeid Karimian
Photo by Mahshid Karizi, Saman Rastegar, Ehsan Ahmadi, Samaneh Bagherzadeh
Stage Manager: Ensiye Roohitavaf
Original Poster Design by Sara Yousefpour
Archival Poster by Ali Foumani
January-March 2019
Mehregan Theater, Tehran, Iran
On her fortieth birthday, a melancholic woman meets the ghost of her killed psychoanalyst, where private confession collides with public history. Staged in the fortieth year after the 1979 Iranian Revolution, the work interrogates promises, betrayals, and inherited silence. Moving between the present and the Avesta, it challenges sacred language, turning it into protest. With live improvised ambient music, her body creates a ritual space of memory, rupture, and resistance.
The Good Doctor
by Neil Simon
Directed by Azita Mohajeri & Samaneh Bagherzadeh
Cast:
Azita Mohajeri
Nahid Pashaei
Elham Azhdari
Hossein Shabani
Asareh Ebrahimpour
Mojtaba Hashemizadeh
Costume Design by Samaneh Bagherzadeh
Photo by Omid Bahramzad
Archival Poster by Ali Foumani
February 2017
AM Studio, Dubai, UAE
The Good Doctor is a witty and imaginative play inspired by the short stories of Anton Chekhov. This production employs a minimalist, actor-driven approach, using physicality and rhythm to bring to life a series of comedic and poignant vignettes, moving fluidly between narration and performance to reveal the humor, fragility, absurdity, and quiet resilience of everyday human experience.
ORMO
Written and directed by Ali Foumani
Cast:
Parisa Ghasemi
Mahyar Vaghari
Bahram Noori
Assistant Director: Amir Jadoosokhan
Music by Roozbeh Akhavan
Costume and Mask Design by Samaneh Bagherzadeh
Photo by Ariya Azad, Hooman Fakhteh
Stage Manager: Shaghayegh Kafili
Original Poster Design by Narges Rahmani
Archival Poster by Ali Foumani
April 2016
Entezami Theater Hall, Tehran, Iran
ORMO embodies the experience of women targeted in acid attacks in Iran through a critical reading of Mithraism within the framework of Tauroctony, realized as physical theatre. Engaging with Orpheus and Morpheus, the work revisits sacrificial violence to interrogate gendered power structures and inscribe contemporary trauma onto the body as both a site of suffering and resistance.
Being Bijan, Being Manijeh
Based on Shahnameh
Written and directed by Ali Foumani
Cast:
Samaneh Bagherzadeh, Azita Mohajeri, Mojtaba Hashemizadeh, Iman Arjmandi & Hamid Mollahossini
Costume & Makeup Design by Samaneh Bagherzadeh
Artwork by Mehrdad Sadat
Sound Design by Ali Foumani
Photo by Omid Bahramzad
Stage Manager: Samaneh Bagherzadeh
Produced by Nasim Yazdani
Archival Poster by Ali Foumani
April 2015
Courtyard Playhouse, Dubai, UAE
In Being Bijan, Being Manijeh—an adaptive re-reading of a tale from Shahnameh—the story unfolded through a performative unveiling and auction of abstract paintings, interwoven with mime, and distancing monologues. Giacometti’s Walking Man marked Bijan’s journey; Picasso’s Weeping Woman framed his imprisonment with a southern Iranian lament. In the final union, the lead performer, speechless, played Beethoven’s Ninth on a miniature traditional instrument no larger than a human mouth.
27 Wagons Full of Cotton
by Tennessee Williams
Directed by Ali Foumani
Cast:
Azita Mohajeri
Alireza Kianian
Mojtaba Hashemizadeh
Costume & Makeup Design by Samaneh Bagherzadeh
Makeup by Nadereh Shirani
Set Design by Ali Foumani & Samaneh Bagherzadeh
Music by Siamak Hashemian
Photo by Ali Mohajer, Samaneh Bagherzadeh
Stage Manager: Samaneh Bagherzadeh
Original Poster Design by Parisa Sahba
Archival Poster by Ali Foumani
December 2014
AM Studio, Dubai, UAE
In this staging of 27 Wagons Full of Cotton, the cotton is conceived as a dense, suffocating, and combustible atmosphere. The space is rendered as a landscape of heat and pressure, where silence carries a threat and proximity signals power. Moving away from Southern melodrama, the production frames the play as an anatomy of manipulation disguised as intimacy, exposing desire as strategy and vulnerability as a site of quiet, irreversible harm.
Wagtails
Written and directed by Ali Foumani
Cast:
Saeed Amirsoleimani
Samaneh Bagherzadeh
Yousof Afshar
Costume & Makeup Design by Samaneh Bagherzadeh
Set Design by Ali Foumani & Samaneh Bagherzadeh
Photo by Ali Mohajer, Sharomin Etemadnia
Original Poster Design by Parham Arab
Archival Poster by Ali Foumani
November 2014
AM Studio, Dubai, UAE
The production examines the hidden life of a couple engaged in political activism, confronting a central dilemma: does the end justify the means? Set within the charged intimacy of their private space, the staging traces the fracture between ethical conviction and political necessity. Through silence, proximity, and restrained tension, the performance reveals how ideology erodes intimacy and how moral compromise quietly reshapes love and trust.
The Bear
by Anton Chekhov
Directed by Ali Foumani
Cast:
Nila Zojaji
Alireza Afsharjam
Mojtaba Hashemizadeh
Assistant Director: Azita Mohajeri
Costume & Makeup Design by Samaneh Bagherzadeh
Set Design by Ali Foumani & Samaneh Bagherzadeh
Photo by Ali Mohajer, Pani Farin, Sharomin Etemadnia
Stage Manager: Samaneh Bagherzadeh
Original Poster Design by Mohammad Hamed Zeinali
Archival Poster by Ali Foumani
March 2014
Courtyard Playhouse, Dubai, UAE
By destabilizing realism and emphasizing embodied tension, the staging aimed to uncover a raw, contemporary urgency within Chekhov’s short comedy, and to suggest that its explosive intimacy remains strikingly modern.
A Marriage Proposal
by Anton Chekhov
Directed by Ali Foumani
Cast - Lineup 2:
Nila Zojaji (Natalya)
Alireza Afsharjam (Stepan)
Mohammad Hamed Zeinali (Ivan)
Costume & Makeup Design by Samaneh Bagherzadeh
Set Design by Ali Foumani & Samaneh Bagherzadeh
Photo by Ali Mohajer, Pani Farin, Omid Bahramzad
Stage Manager: Samaneh Bagherzadeh
Original Poster Design by Mohammad Hamed Zeinali
Archival Poster by Ali Foumani
January–February 2014
Courtyard Playhouse, Dubai, UAE
In this production of A Marriage Proposal, the staging focuses on the absurd fragility beneath social politeness. Rather than treating it as mere situational comedy, the play is approached as a study of ego, insecurity, and emotional immaturity disguised as civility. Through heightened rhythm, precise physicality, and tightly controlled pacing, the staging emphasizes how trivial disputes expose deeper anxieties about status, love, and identity.
A Marriage Proposal
by Anton Chekhov
Directed by Ali Foumani
Cast - Lineup 1:
Nila Zojaji (Natalya)
Alireza Afsharjam (Ivan)
Mojtaba Hashemizadeh (Stepan)
Costume & Makeup Design by Samaneh Bagherzadeh
Set Design by Ali Foumani & Samaneh Bagherzadeh
Photo by Ali Mohajer, Pani Farin, Omid Bahramzad
Stage Manager: Samaneh Bagherzadeh
Original Poster Design by Mohammad Hamed Zeinali
Archival Poster by Ali Foumani
January–February 2014
Courtyard Playhouse, Dubai, UAE
In this production of A Marriage Proposal, the staging focuses on the absurd fragility beneath social politeness. Rather than treating it as mere situational comedy, the play is approached as a study of ego, insecurity, and emotional immaturity disguised as civility. Through heightened rhythm, precise physicality, and tightly controlled pacing, the staging emphasizes how trivial disputes expose deeper anxieties about status, love, and identity.
Betrayal
by Harold Pinter
Directed by Ali Foumani
Cast:
Samaneh Bagherzadeh
Mehrdad Sodagar
Amir Hakimi
Costume & Makeup Design by Samaneh Bagherzadeh
Photo by Ali Mohajer, Omid Bahramzad
Stage manager: Shady Babaei
Original Poster Design by Fereshteh Jamali
Archival Poster by Ali Foumani
August 2013
Alliance Française, Dubai, UAE
In this staging of Betrayal, the production approaches the work through an experimental theatre lens, shaping it into a metaphor for a return to the past and a re-examination of one’s choices, particularly for audiences who have experienced migration, shifts in identity, or a sense of living between worlds. In this reading, the performance becomes a confrontation with the question of loyalty: to another, to oneself, or to one’s own narrative.
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