_Notes on how a friendship, and a short story became a stage work._
How it began (2019)
The Destroyed started as a conversation between friends. In a master’s theory seminar, my colleague Sadegh Roshan presented Jacques Rancière’s **_The Emancipated Spectator_** with the kind of passion that makes a room sit up. I’d read the essay before, but that day it felt newly urgent: what if a performance doesn’t ask the audience to decode a message, but invites them to co-author meaning?
Around the same time, Sadegh introduced me to a short story by **Aboutorab Khosravi**, spare, unsettling, and resolutely undramatic in the conventional sense. In another course, _Dramatic Aspects of Persian Literature_, we were being asked to “find” drama where it didn’t exist. Khosravi’s story resisted that assignment beautifully. So we asked a different question: **How do you stage a text that refuses to be staged?**
We gathered a small ensemble, Kiarash Dadgar, Amin Simiar, Parham, Arvan, and others, and began rehearsals. Two months in, the world stopped. COVID arrived, then the distance, and the project went quiet. I turned to solo work, but The Destroyed stayed with me like a seed waiting for the season to change.
Reimagining in Montréal
When I moved to Montréal, the seed sprouted. In April 2025 I started sketching scenes and asking how **technology** and **non-theatre collaborators** might expand the piece. What if the stage welcomed people whose expertise wasn’t theatre but whose lived experience, technical fluency, and cultural memory were exactly what the work needed?
I reached out, a producer came on board, and suddenly the ecology of the project changed. We needed a stage manager, then more performers, designers, and technical leads. The team grew—fifteen, then sixteen, each person filling a space we hadn’t known was empty until they stepped into it.
Form & language
The Destroyed is polyphonic by design. It speaks **English, French, and Persian**, and at points **Kurdish**. Its gestures are drawn from **Iranian ritual forms** and **performative storytelling** including **naqqāli** (epic narration) with threads from the south and the western borders of Iran. The result isn’t folkloric quotation; it’s a living syntax where ritual, image, and testimony circulate to generate meaning **with** the audience rather than **for** them.
Even off the page, Khosravi’s refusal to “perform drama” remains the spine of the piece. We don’t adapt the story so much as **stage its resistance** building a score of images, actions, and invitations that let spectators assemble their own narrative pathways.
Process
- **Ensemble-led dramaturgy.** Scenes are built from prompts, interviews, and shared archives. We keep the rehearsal room hospitable to experiment and contradiction.
- **Technology as partner.** Cameras and projections shape attention rather than decorate it
- **Access to performance.** Many collaborators do not have formal theatre backgrounds. That is deliberate. For us, **the ability to perform is a right**, not a credential.
Where it is now
We mounted a three-night tryout in Montréal to gather feedback and refine the score. The response confirmed what we felt in the room: the piece resonates across languages and geographies while staying unmistakably **Iranian** in its ethics, humor, and wounds. We’re now polishing the work and planning presentations with larger audiences and venues.
Gratitude
To Sadegh for the spark; to the early ensemble for the courage to begin; to the current team for building a world together; and to the audiences who met us halfway and made their own stories out of ours.
Fortunately, the piece was succesful in driving media attention which I have listed the links below
Radio:
[CBC: All in a Weekend](https://www.cbc.ca/listen/live-radio/1-78-all-in-a-weekend/clip/16166704-new-post-modern-iranian-play-concordias-black-box-theatre)
McGill: [Upstage Radio Show](https://ckut.ca/playlists/shows/25865)
Concordia University: [Voice of the Voiceless](http://cjlo.com/shows/voice-voiceless/episode-08092506)
UQAM: [État de flow](https://www.choq.ca/balados/etat-de-flow/emission-du-29-octobre-2025)
TV:
[Ava Television](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLxI2j7u06w&t=155s)
Web:
[Broadway World](https://www.broadwayworld.com/montreal/article/THE-DESTROYED-WIll-Play-Black-Box-Theatre-at-EV-Pavilion-This-September-20250821)
If you’re interested in presenting **The Destroyed** or collaborating on its next iteration, I’d love to talk.
Credits
Producers: Shadi Yazdani, Syd Hamidreza Hosseini
Director: Syd Hamidreza Hosseini
Dramaturg: Shahab Nezamdoost
Video Art: Rebecca Acone
Sound design: Kamyar Karimi
Performers: Saina Alikhani, Pani Bolbolabadi, Nastaran Pourtaherian, Amir Pakdel, Parsa Sahidian, Shadi Yazdani
Photographer: Masoud Pakdel
Stage Manager: Hamed Sadatbarikani
Videographer: Krystian Erlindo Sosa
Graphic Designer: Amirhossein Zarifian
Assistant Director: Mina Bahra
Media relations Manager: Raphaëlle Behar
