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Performer/Creator Barzin Akhavan Uses Theatre as a Bridge Between U.S. and Iran

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Performer/Creator Barzin Akhavan Uses Theatre as a Bridge Between U.S. and Iran

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by Linda Lombardi, dramaturg

Anyone who meets him agrees, Barzin Akhavan is one of the most generous, thoughtful, and funny theatremakers working today. He’s performed regionally across the country, including six seasons as a company member with the Oregon Shakespeare Festival (OSF), and on Broadway in The Kite Runner and Network.

Self-described “German by country of birth, Persian by way of blood, and American by immigration,” Akhanan immigrated to the U.S. with his parents in 1980 at the age of four. Relations between the U.S. and Iran were heated due to the recent hostage crisis, and remain precarious today. Growing up in both Florida and Washington State gave him a unique perspective of the two Americas—rich and poor, multicultural and homogenous. In his world premiere solo show, Behfarmaheen (If You Please), Akhavan shares the story of his life through personal and theatrical vignettes. Incorporating the ancient and dramatic Iranian style of Naghali, Behfarmaheen features scripted and freestyle storytelling.

Behfarmaheen, a Persian phrase pronounced as Beh-far-ma-yeen and translated as “If you please…” or “After you…,” is a polite way to offer something to someone or invite someone to an action. For example, holding the door open for someone, offering a plate of food, or in this case, welcoming audiences to the show.

How did Behfarmaheen (If You Please) develop as a play?

It started in grad school at the University of Washington as a way to unpack my experience as an immigrant to the United States and being in a place where I had always felt like I wasn’t necessarily accepted in my birth community, which is the Iranian community, because in trying to become more American, I became more westernized in my family’s eyes. So, I’m not truly Iranian to them. And also feeling like I was not fully American. All the cultural things that made me Iranian became a barrier to me being viewed as an American.

My first year at OSF, I did it for company members as part of the Midnight Projects and expanded on the stories. The following year, I did an expanded version as part of OSF Presents, where company members with existing work got to publicly present a staged production. Fellow UW alum, Desdemona Chiang, was a directing assistant that year and came on as my director. Last year, OSF contacted me and said they wanted to look at it for this season. There were other OSF core company members that had solo shows and the idea was these solo shows could be done at a fraction of the cost of a larger production but still have the merit and the meat.

Part of what you explore in the show is the immigrant experience of being caught between two cultures. When did you first notice that feeling?

I can remember feeling that as long as I have memory. I was born in Germany and my parents are Iranian. We lived in a dorm in Germany that was filled with other minorities, so I felt comfortable there because so many languages were being spoken and nobody made fun of you or tried to correct your German because everybody was learning the language. Just as I felt comfortable with German and was speaking Farsi with my family, we immigrated to the U.S. and I had to learn this whole new language. I had an accent again and was saying words wrong, so I felt otherized there. At the same time, because I spoke these other languages, my Farsi wasn’t as strong as it should be. So, I was “other” in my own community—the Persian community—and definitely the other in the American community. Where can I feel whole?

I’ve been back to Iran three times in my life—once as a newborn while my parents acclimated to having a child, but I have no memory of that trip. The second time was in third grade and then in fifth grade. That’s 38 years now that I haven’t been able to set foot on Iranian soil. I wish I could go back as an adult and lift up the dirt and have it sift through my fingers and know what that smells like. I can still smell what Lynnwood, WA, smells like because that was my memory growing up at my dad’s house. I can smell that dampness and those trees and the bark around us and it brings me such peace and calm. I wonder what those smells and feels would be like in Iran.

You became a U.S. citizen in high school. What does citizenship mean to you?

Citizenship means being a member of a community, which can be as large as a nation and as small as your block, and working with the rest of the citizens of that community as a collective to make your place better. It’s a collection of people together that have a like-minded goal to make their community better.

America’s growing more culturally and racially blended. Do you see us becoming a “melting pot”?

That’s the age-old discussion of melting pot versus salad bowl. In a salad bowl, you put different ingredients into the bowl but they don’t necessarily synthesize. A melting pot implies intermarriage of faiths and different ethnicities, but also creating children out of that—that my lineage and your lineage create this melded person. On behalf of the Middle Eastern community—and that’s a British Anglicized term, there is no real Middle East—but just to say hypothetically the Arabic speaking world, the Muslim world, our consciousness in American history is so early in this process. America’s history is a nation of immigrants and it’s taken each immigrant group time to be recognized and valued as Americans—the Italians faced it, the Irish—that took time because it wasn’t about skin color, it was socioeconomics. As the Italians and Irish got to meld and gain financial freedom, they started to become part of American history. That hasn’t happened yet for Iranians.

Specifically in theatre, we now see plays by African American playwrights and Asian American playwrights more readily accessible and programmed. We haven’t seen that yet for the Middle Eastern community. It’s starting with Sanaz Toosi, Ayad Akhtar, and Yussef El Guindi. Sanaz is putting down a giant building block with English. And this is starting to give us our first seat at the table. Hopefully a show like Behfarmaheen becomes a building block.

When was the first time you saw yourself represented on stage?

Oh, wow. That is such a great question. I have a deep connection with the role of Caliban. I saw a production when I was young where the actor playing the role was a very muscular Black man. He didn’t look anything like me, but when he spoke about being otherized and trapped and having to learn another language, I connected with that. But truly to say that I felt myself represented on stage wasn’t until the 2022 world premiere of English by Sanaz Toossi at The Atlantic. That was the first time I saw Persians on stage, the first time I heard Farsi spoken on stage in a westernized American audience. I’ve seen pieces of Iranian theatre and there I felt seen and represented, but it wasn’t until English that I felt truly like that’s me up there. After almost 30 years of a professional career! And as an actor, Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner and Mary Zimmerman’s Arabian Nights were the first times I felt I could completely be myself in the roles I was playing.

How does theatre serve as a bridge between cultures?

This show might be the first introduction for an audience member to an Iranian person. If I’m the first Iranian they meet and they hear me speaking a foreign language and it’s weird and awkward, that’s just how we might meet in the real world. They might be interested in it or a little afraid of it, but there’s a curiosity around it. As they see my life unfold in front of them, sometimes comically, sometimes tragically, they will start to see themselves. And through that, we bridge the gap between us. That person sees I’m human, I’m just like them. We are humans first, rather than I’m Iranian or male or cisgender. The first thing, if we can go back to it, is that we’re human and we’re here on this earth to interact with each other. Life isn’t meant to be lived alone. We all need human interaction. And so I’m presenting a humanistic view into an Iranian life. These little encounters are what make life truly unique.

What do you hope audiences take away from seeing your show?

At the base level, what I want the most is for them to see a human being on stage and to realize that they’re human too and that the things we have in common are much greater than the things that divide us.