Niloofar Beyzaie (born January 15, 1967 in

Tehran Tehran (; fa, تهران ) is the largest city in Tehran Province and the capital of Iran. With a population of around 9 million in the city and around 16 million in the larger metropolitan area of Greater Tehran, Tehran is the most popul ...

) is an Iranian

dramaturge A dramaturge or dramaturg is a literary adviser or editor in a theatre, opera, or film company who researches, selects, adapts, edits, and interprets scripts, libretti, texts, and printed programmes (or helps others with these tasks), consults auth ...

playwright A playwright or dramatist is a person who writes plays. Etymology The word "play" is from Middle English pleye, from Old English plæġ, pleġa, plæġa ("play, exercise; sport, game; drama, applause"). The word "wright" is an archaic English ...

and theatre director who lives in

exile Exile is primarily penal expulsion from one's native country, and secondarily expatriation or prolonged absence from one's homeland under either the compulsion of circumstance or the rigors of some high purpose. Usually persons and peoples suf ...

Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...

Life

Niloofar Beyzaie is the daughter of the Iranian theater and film director

Bahram Beyzaie Bahrām Beyzāêi (also spelt Beizāi, Beyzāêi, fa, بهرام بیضائی; born 26 December 1938) is an Iranian playwright, theatre director, screenwriter, film editor, and ''ostad, ostād'' ("master") of Persian letters, arts and Iranian s ...

(Bahram Beyzai) and Monir Azam Raminfar who comes from a family of artists. Her uncle Iraj Raminfar is one of the best known costume designers and

scenic design Scenic design (also known as scenography, stage design, or set design) is the creation of theatrical, as well as film or television scenery. Scenic designers come from a variety of artistic backgrounds, but in recent years, are mostly trained ...

ers (Theatre and Film) in Iran. Her mother's uncle Abbas Javanmard was an influential stage directors of the 1940s-70s in Iran. In 1985, Beyzaie had to leave Iran for political reasons and studied

German studies German studies is the field of humanities that researches, documents and disseminates German language and literature in both its historic and present forms. Academic departments of German studies often include classes on German culture, German hi ...

Theater, Film and Media Studies
and

Pedagogy Pedagogy (), most commonly understood as the approach to teaching, is the theory and practice of learning, and how this process influences, and is influenced by, the social, political and psychological development of learners. Pedagogy, taken as ...

at the

Johann Wolfgang Goethe University Goethe University (german: link=no, Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main) is a university located in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. It was founded in 1914 as a citizens' university, which means it was founded and funded by the wealt ...

Frankfurt am Main Frankfurt, officially Frankfurt am Main (; Hessian: , "Frank ford on the Main"), is the most populous city in the German state of Hesse. Its 791,000 inhabitants as of 2022 make it the fifth-most populous city in Germany. Located on its na ...

. After finishing her academic studies (

Master of Arts A Master of Arts ( la, Magister Artium or ''Artium Magister''; abbreviated MA, M.A., AM, or A.M.) is the holder of a master's degree awarded by universities in many countries. The degree is usually contrasted with that of Master of Science. Tho ...

) she founded, in 1994, the theater group "Daritsche". Since then, she is leading this group as stage director, playwright, and light and costume designer. She is married and has a daughter.

Career

Central themes of her theater work are "woman", "the suffering of individuals among the crowd" and "being a stranger either in the own or in the foreign society". She also puts emphasis on the sociopolitical context of the theater in its contemporary issues. In addition to her theatrical work she writes articles about the political and social situation, particularly the situation of women in Iran. She advocates for women's rights and for the rights of gays and lesbians in Iran and is involved in the Iranian art and cultural scene in exile for the rights of religious minorities in Iran, in particular the officially persecuted Baháʼís. 2005, she was awarded the Persian "World Academy of Art, Literature and Media" in Budapest as the best theatre director in exile in the category "the Performing Arts". In the same year, her play ''Daughters of the Sun'' (Come,dance with me) was performed in Zurich by Maralam Theater under direction of Peter Braschler. The revival of her play ''No Man's Land'' was performed in German in March 2009 in Karlsruhe within the framework of the "Cultural Perspectives of Women festival 09". Her play "Face to Face at the Threshold of the Cold Season" is about two very important women of the Iranian history " Táhirih Qurratu'l- ayn" and " Forough Farrokhzad" had its premiere in October 2011 and was also performed in Toronto, Otawa and Los Angeles Her play, ''In the presence of the Wind'', was written by her father in the 1960s and was played in several cities of Europe and Germany from 2015 until October 2016. Her play, ''In this Place and at this Time'' (based on the stories of Mahshid Amirshahi) was played in Frankfurt, Collogne, Berlin, Heidelberg and Zürich from October 2017 to May 2018. ّShe received the audience award for best play for this piece from the Iranian Theater Festival in Heidelberg on 3 February 2018. Beyzaie was honored for her lifelong theater work on march 2-3 2018 by "the cultural society of iranian women" in Vancouver. In this context, the play ''Lady in Mirror'', which consists of parts of her plays, was performed by the Theatre group Shahrzad. She also received the Prize as the best Personality of the year 2018 from the "Foundation of Pasargad Heritage" for the fields of Art and Culture in March 2018. In 2018, she also directed the play ''The lost ones'' which based on documents, letters, and memoirs of the victims of the 1988 mass executions of dissidents by the Islamic government of Iran in the 80s. In 2019, she directed the play, ''When love is a sin''. In this play, female poets from different eras who dated back to Iran, Afghanistan and Tajikistan, meet each other and narrate the stories of their lives and suffering as women through their poems which they recite singing.

Selected works

Staging (theatre director)

* Marjan, Mani and a few small problems, 1996 * The Last Game, 1997 * No Man's Land, 1998–99 * A knife in the back ( A Play by Kaveh Esmaili), 1999–2000 * The blue dreams of gray women, 2000–2001 * Three Opinions on a death (based on texts by Mina Assadi), 2001–2002 *

The Blind Owl ''The Blind Owl'' (1936; fa, بوف کور, ''Boof-e koor'', ) is Sadegh Hedayat's magnum opus and a major literary work of 20th century Iran. Written in Persian, it is narrated by an unnamed pen case painter, who addresses his murderous conf ...

(based on a text by

Sadegh Hedayat Sadegh Hedayat ( fa, صادق هدایت ; 17 February 1903 – 9 April 1951) was an Iranian writer and translator. Best known for his novel '' The Blind Owl'', he was one of the earliest Iranian writers to adopt literary modernism in their care ...

), 2004–2005 * The Blind Owl (bilingual, along with Tom Peifer), 2005 * foreign as you and I (based on a text by Farhang Kassraei and Maria Piniella), 2006–2007 * The Voice of Silence, 2007–2008 * The blind owl (revival), 2008 * No Man's Land (revival in German language), 2009 * One file, two murders, 2009–2010 * Diaries of newspapers or How the revolution ate its grandchildren (Play reading) 2011 * Face to Face at the Threshold of the Cold Season, 2011-2012 * In the presence of the Wind, 2015-2016 (A Play by

) * In this Place and at this Time, 2017-2018 (based on Texts von Mahshid Amirshahi) * The Lost Ones, 2018-2020 (based on Text of Roya Ghiasi, Shokoufeh Motazeri, Ghorbanali Shokri) * When love is a sin 2019 (Text Composition: Zhaleh Mosaed)

Playwright

* Banu in the mirror city (performed in the same year under direction of Mohsen Hosseini in Frankfurt am Main), 1994 * Marjan, Mani and a few small problems, 1995 * The last game, 1996 * No Man's Land, 1997 * The blue dreams of the gray women, 2000 * Come dance with me (Daughters of the Sun), 2005 * The Voice of Silence, 2006 * One file, two murders, 2009 * Face to Face at the Threshold of the Cold Season, 2011. * Banu in the mirror (directed by Hessam Anvari, 2018, Vancouver)

Plays (dramaturge)

* Three Opinions on a death (based on a text by: Mina Assadi), 2001–2002 *

(based on a text by: Sadegh Hedayat), 2004–2005 * foreign as you and I (based on a text by Farhang Kassraei and Maria Piniella), 2006–2007 * The Voice of Silence, 2007–2008 * Diaries of newspapers or How the revolution ate its grandchildren (Play reading) 2011 * In this Place and at this Time, 2017-2018 * The Lost Ones, 2018-2020 * When love is a sin 2019

Awards

* 2005:''Persian "World Academy of Art, Literature and Media"''

Budapest Budapest (, ; ) is the capital and most populous city of Hungary. It is the ninth-largest city in the European Union by population within city limits and the second-largest city on the Danube river; the city has an estimated population ...

:''Best Director'' in the Performing Arts'' category'' and * 2018:ََ Audience Award for her Play "In this Place and at this Time" in the Iranian Theater Festival in Heildelberg 3. February 2018. * 2018:ََ Tribute to Director and Playwright Ms. Niloofar Beyzaie followed by the musical Lady in the Mirror, 2nd and 3.of March 2018. *2018: Prize as the best Personality of the year 2018 from the "Foundation of Pasargad Heritage" for the fields of Art and Culture in March 2018

References

External links

The blind owl

Interview at tavaana.org

Critics in German1

Critics in German2

Daritsche theater group- The Culture Portal of the city of Frankfurt

Beyzaie, Niloofar- The World Academy of Arts, Literature and Media (WAALM)

Niloofar Beyzaie IRANIAN STUDIES DIRECTORY

The Voice of Silence by Diyalog Festival Berlin

Critics in German3

_19._Januar_2007 Interview Germany SWR

No man's land

the blind owl by harbourfront centre

Beyzaie at IMDb
{{DEFAULTSORT:Beyzaie, Niloofar Iranian dramatists and playwrights 1967 births Iranian theatre directors Iranian exiles Living people Iranian human rights activists Iranian writers Iranian women writers Women dramatists and playwrights