The desire for communication and sharing has been the fundamental impulse for men to create art and language. Theatre, from the beginning, has been the most intimate form of art that requires the participation of artists and spectators alike. At Boston Experimental Theatre Company (BETC), I’ve been studying Antonin Artaud’s Theatre of Cruelty and Jerzy Grotowski’s Poor Theatre in an effort to create an environment in which both artists and spectators alike can connect to their dreams and emotions at their deepest level. As an Iranian artist living and working in the United States since 2002, one of the most important lessons I’ve learned is that my cultural dialogue with my American colleagues has a significant impact on the quality of my productions. Although, I have been very disappointed to learn that many other Iranians and Americans do not have this great opportunity of cultural exchange.

Living in an era when misunderstanding and intolerance have created increased violence, I feel a responsibility to share my own experiences of dialogue among cultures.  Since arriving in the United States of America, Dr. Dariush Shayegan’s philosophy of Dialogue of Civilizations has informed my way of living in this new home and helped me to recognize how important it is for 21st-century citizens to understand and feel the desire of intimate dialogue. Art or War, the intimate dialogue is inevitable.

In 2013, inspired by Dr. Shayegan’s writings, I decided to continue my study and practice of Dialogue of Civilizations (DoC) at BETC and to create an environment for Iranian, American, and international artists and free thinkers to have opportunities to learn about others in an artistic setting. Ever since, I produced and directed the very first theatre collaborations between Tehran and Boston, CREATURES-2013, and Fish trees- 2017,  inviting Iranian theatre artists directly from Tehran to Boston, studying and producing plays from SHAHNAMEH, The Persian Book of Kings 2014-2023, producing an adaptation of Sadegh Hedayat’s Blind Owl, 2015, and producing and directing the very first collaboration among artists from Iran, Iraq and the U.S., M(O)ther–2020.   All inspired by the theatre and philosophy of Mr. Artaud and Mr. Grotowski, our goal is to create a psychoanalytic and cultural dialogue with our artists, collaborators, supporters, and spectators worldwide. The Dialogue of Civilizations (DoC) initiative aims to spark global understanding and empathy to foster a future of symbiotic cultural development and exchange. 

Click here to learn about our new Dialogue of Civilizations production, in coordination with the American Repertory Theater at Harvard University. 

Vahdat Yeganeh

Boston Experimental Theatre 

Founder/Artistic Director