Ohnonononononoooo 9/11MANComesREALLY reallyhardTONIGHT

Overview

A true to the definition 9/11 meditation, ceremony, ritual that takes you really way high up in the sky and smash your head into the glass windows of reality. The performance will most likely feel like we are all on the same ride but defenitely have different destinations in mind. There might be a slight struggle as to who picks the route. What is certain however, as it always is, is that some of us will be the heros of this journey, some will be the victims and some will never forget. 

The idea of this performance came to Sohrab when in a reahersal someone asked “where were you on 9/11?” and he felt a strong impulse to make sure everyone knows that he was 8 at the time and home watching TV. 

In Ohnonononononoooo9/11MANComesREALLYreallyhardTONIGHT, Sohrab will be the middle eastern Sewer Rat he’s been deep down but forgot to express to his friends. 

 

About the Artist

With my country, Iran, undergoing a nightmarish, violent revolution, everyday I find myself thinking, what does “Home” mean to me? The final analysis tells me the word Home at its core meaning equates to the word Being. In other words, I have come to believe Home is where one can Be. And so what happens to the Being of the individual when Home is destroyed culminates the body of work that I have been in the process of making and continue to investigate as I encounter life. My personal life will remain as the initial playground of inspiration as it is deeply impacted by the loss of Home and Community. My last work, Green Card Project curated by Philadelphia’s Cannonball Festival, simulated the process of an Iranian citizen applying for an American visa. This interactive theatre installation, entirely performed by the audience members, would give the players no choice but to buy-in to the bureaucratic game of objectifying “The Other” in the name of the law. An impact that very well demonstrates my artistic inclinations: to illuminate the injustice at a level that activates the community member not only on the intellectual level but more so by putting them in the real circumstance as much as possible and creating space for their personal reflection.