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My consulting work is about empowering communities to become more visible in American theatre as artists, patrons, and stakeholders. I want to amplify the voices of under-represented communities and help build thriving artistic networks, locally & globally. I'm very proud to be a founding board member of MENA Theatre Makers Alliance, a board member of Consortium of Asian American Theaters and Artists, and to have served as advisor to TCG's THRIVE! and NEFA's National Theatre Project grant programs.
I am often invited to speak about Middle Eastern American Theater and the founding in 1996 of Golden Thread Productions, the first American theater company devoted to the Middle East. At this conversation titled, Modeling Possibility and Resistance, hosted by The Iris Lab at UC Santa Cruz, I shared my experience of the early years of our MENA Theater movement and the challenges of establishing our artistic community as a valued and necessary voice in American theater. This conversation was livestreamed on Howlround and can be viewed on YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_21S-PxXAk
It has been said that translation utilizes an encyclopedia, not a dictionary. This applies even more to translating plays because they are written to be performed live on stage. Translating plays is like building a bridge from one culture, one set of social conventions, one collection of historical and literary contexts, to another. In my Translation Workshop, we review elements of translation in general, and explore unique challenges encountered when translating plays. I focus on my own experience of translating Iranian plays from Persian to English including, A Moment of Silence by Mohammad Yaghoubi, The Language of Wild Berries by Naghmeh Samini, and my stage adaptation of Nizami's Leili & Majnun.
