Masterclass: Daily Life as Performance – Crafting Narratives from Everyday Experiences

Amir Reza Koohestani was born in Shiraz, Iran in 1978. At a young age, he began publishing short stories in local newspapers and working in film. After a brief experience as a performer, he devoted his time to writing his first plays—And the Day Never Came (1999) and The Murmuring Tales (2000)—for the Mehr Theatre Group. Koohestani's third play, Dance on Glasses (2001), gained him international notoriety and the support of several European theatrical artistic directors and festivals.

Further work includes the plays Recent Experiences (from the original text by Canadian writers Nadia Ross and Jacob Wren, 2003); Amid the Clouds (2005); Dry Blood & Fresh Vegetables (2007); Quartet: A Journey North (2008); Where Were You on January 8th? (2009); Ivanov (2011); and The Fourth Wall (from the original play England by Tim Crouch, 2012), which was presented one hundred times in an art gallery in Tehran.

Over the past fifteen years, Koohestani wrote and directed the plays Timeloss (2013), Hearing (2015) and Summerless (2018), which was presented as the “Time Trilogy” at the Festival TNB, in Rennes, France in November 2018.

Since 2006, Koohestani has been independently working across Europe at Munchner Kammerspiele, Thalia Theater, Deutsches Theater, La Comédie de Genève, Riksteatern and Theater Freiburg, creating more than 15 new productions. He has established strong creative partnerships with the actress, playwright and director Mahin Sadri; light designer and scenographer Éric Soyer; composer Matthias Peyker and video artist Philip Hohenwarter. Koohestani also regularly collaborates with the actor and film director, Mani Haghighi, with whom he co-wrote the scripts for Modest Reception (which received the Netpac Award at the 2012 Berlin International Film Festival) and Subtraction 2023).

In May 2023, after a 2-year pause due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Koohestani and his company created Blind Runner, which premiered in Brussels as part of the Kunstenfestivaldesarts.

His plays are distinguished by their poetic narratives, subtle criticism, and exploration of personal and political themes. Through his creations, Koohestani continues to inspire and challenge audiences around the world, combining the intimate and the universal and offering a unique perspective on the intersection of Iranian theater and contemporary global theater.

Far from limiting himself to writing and directing, Koohestani is also involved in the transmission of knowledge. He leads workshops at prestigious institutions such as La Manufacture “On Narratives and Aesthetics in Contemporary Theater”, the CIFAS Atelier 2016: “Building Theater from Personal Stories,” and the Berliner Festspiele International Forum, thereby promoting innovation and exchange in contemporary theater creation. These commitments reflect his dedication to nurturing creative talent and advancing the global artistic community.

In 2025, Koohestani led the École des Maîtres—an international travelling theatre training course—with 20 actors of five different nationalities. Together, they presented the fruits of their work with different proposals in Liège, Lisbon, Coimbra, Milan, Udine and Angers.

Mehr Theatre Group was founded in 1996 in Shiraz, Iran, as an acting workshop seeking a new theatrical language, distinct from traditional forms and strongly influenced by cinema. Based in Paris since 2008, and administered by French producer Pierre Reis, the company works between Tehran and exile, bringing together artists inside and outside Iran and regularly collaborating with non-Iranian designers and composers.

Led by writer-director Amir Reza Koohestani—whose academic work in Manchester focused on post-9/11 documentary theatre—with long-time collaborator and playwright Mahin Sadri, and Iranian production manager and actor Mohammad Reza Hosseinzadeh, the Mehr Theatre Group creates text-driven, documentary-inspired pieces that combine personal archives, interviews and everyday documents with a precise, minimalist staging.

Since working in German theatres, Koohestani has developed a distinctive use of live PTZ “surveillance” cameras, allowing images from the stage to be framed and recomposed in real-time. Memory, testimony and the feeling of living between two worlds—past and present, homeland and elsewhere—run through all of Mehr’s productions, even when they are based on classics.

Mehr’s internationally known works—including Dance on Glasses, Timeloss, Hearing, En Transit and Blind Runner—have toured to major festivals such as Kunstenfestivaldesarts, Holland Festival, Wiener Festwochen, Festival d’Avignon, Festival d’Automne à Paris, La Biennale di Venezia, Under The Radar, etc. and the company has received multiple awards in Iran, including Best Theatre Company (2010), as well as several international prizes for its productions, including a Special Citation at the 69th Obie Awards (2025).