Mahdieh Farjoo

Director, actor – Tehran, Iran
Participant International Forum 2024

Mahdieh Farjoo is a theatre artist and researcher, born in 1998 in Bushehr, Iran. She earned her bachelor’s degree in theatre directing at the University of Tehran. Since she started her studies, she has been engaged in various projects experiencing a variety of genres. Her works have often been involved with socio-political issues in Iran, trying to hear the voices emerging here and there in the street. Working in the artistic direction team of the Tajrobeh Theater Festival, which gathered emerging artists to perform in unconventional places, made her think about performance more courageously, leading her to make works directly engaged with what surrounds her.

Working at the intersection of various disciplines, she has worked with artists and scholars from other majors. In collaboration with the Crowd Cognition Lab at LMU Munich, “City: One Street” is a performative process of women walking in one of the most crowded streets of Tehran, recording their point of view for the audience while walking among them. Since then, she has focused on processes that can be considered as performance through their continuation. Also as a researcher, she has been engaged with language theory – as has been put forth by J. L. Austin – and the ways words can bring about action.