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TJAC World
2022 - present/Theatre/USA, Ireland

Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World

Co-produced with National Theatre of Parramatta. Originally commissioned by HOME and National Theatre of Parramatta.

Dates

Next show:Dublin Theatre Festival,

Dublin

10 - 12 Oct 2024
The Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center, University of Maryland,Washington D.C.
14 - 15 Nov 2024
Previous shows
The Nimoy, UCLA's Center for the Art of Performance,Los Angeles
27 - 28 Sep 2024
TBA Festival, Portland Institute for Contemporary Art,Portland
20 - 21 Sep 2024
Merrill Theater, On the Boards,Seattle
12 - 14 Sep 2024
Sydney Festival, Sydney Opera HouseSydney
19 - 21 Jan 2024
Arthur Miller Theatre, University of MichiganMichigan
15 - 18 Nov 2023
Traverse Theatre,Edinburgh
15 - 27 Aug 2023
Battersea Arts Centre,London
9 - 26 Nov 2022
HOME,Manchester
22 Oct 2022
An investigation into the nature of investigation, with the unsolved murder of a pop icon at its centre…
It’s the 1970’s and Fereydoun Farrokhzad’s star is blazing bright — he’s a sex symbol and chart-topping pop singer — imagine an Iranian Tom Jones
A decade on and he’s living in political exile in Bonn, Germany, though still performing to sold-out audiences in Europe.
On 7 August 1992, he’s found brutally murdered in his flat. The neighbours said his dogs 
had been barking for two nights.

Show info

Fereydoun Farrokhzad is invisible to everyone apart from, mostly, Iranians, because nobody, apart from them, ever has to think about him.

1992, the Iranian pop sensation and refugee Fereydoun Farrokhzad, sometimes called Iran's “Tom Jones”, was found brutally murdered in his home in Germany, only six months after playing to sold-out audiences at London’s Royal Albert Hall. The case was never solved.

This witty, fast-paced and cutting-edge production cuts to the heart of the biggest true crime case that you have never heard of. An investigation into both an iconic murder and an investigation into the nature of the investigation itself.

Part free-wheeling comic lecture, part podcast and part play, and accompanied by live music, Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World is a thrilling ride down the rabbit hole of Wikipedia and murder mystery podcasts, sorting through the tangle of information available online, in a post-colonial world, to reveal the limits of the search engines in solving a decades-old, cold case.

Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World is the final part of a trilogy of plays for the stage about how technology, global politics and fracturing identities are changing the world. It includes: The Believers are but Brothers and Rich Kids: A History of Shopping Malls in Tehran.

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The team

WritersJavaad Alipoor with Chris Thorpe
Co-creatorsJavaad Alipoor and Natalie Diddams
DramaturgChris Thorpe
DirectorJavaad Alipoor
Set, Costume and Lighting DesignBen Brockman
Composer, Music Director and MusicianMe-Lee Hay
MusicRaam Emami
Sound DesignSimon McCorry
Projection and Video DesignLimbic Cinema
PerformersJavaad Alipoor and Asha Reid with Raam Emami, together with on-stage musician Me-Lee Hay
Specialist AV TechnicianBarret Hodgson
Touring Production ManagerDaniel Potter
Production ManagementThe Production Family

Partners

Supported by Horizon

Awards

2022Selected as one of The Guardian's Top Theatre Shows of 2022

“Alipoor and his collaborators have the skill of turning mind-stretching ideas into theatrically thrilling performance. The show gleefully mashes up genres, smashing together the quiet authority of the murder mystery podcast, the intimacy of autobiographical storytelling, and the visual spectacle of multimedia performance – while simultaneously deconstructing each of these forms. In a culture that so often seeks to simplify, this is a dazzling argument for complexity.”

The Guardian2023.United Kingdom
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