Bio
Kayhan Irani is an artivist dedicated to unleashing beauty and truth from unconventional and irregular platforms. After receiving traditional theater training from the High School of Performing Arts in New York City (a.k.a FAME), Kayhan went on to expand her repertoire doing traditional and non-traditional theater at various venues such as Lincoln Center, The Public Theater, Chashama Theater, The Lower East Side Tenement Museum and on city streets. Her one-woman show entitled We've Come Undone, highlights the lives of immigrant women post 9/11, is an experiment in how contemporary performance can be combined with participatory theater to engage audiences in political and social change. It has been presented across North America at college and university campuses, international theater festivals, fundraisers, and even at Burning Man!
She continues to further the connection between contemporary theater and civic dialogue through continuous collaborations with other artists and political and community organizations. In 2006 she wrote and performed in an original production of “Jackie ‘n’ the Beanstalk”, a children’s aerial-circus-theater show about asthma, environmental awareness and civic engagement, at The Point, C.D.C. in the South Bronx, which has been performed annually for three years in a row.
Kayhan is an enthusiastic practitioner and trainer of Theater of the Oppressed, a participatory form of theater for social change. She facilitates workshops for diverse organizations and institutions in the U.S. and abroad. In early 2004 Kayhan had the opportunity to lead theater workshops in occupied Iraq, with Childhood’s Voices and Happy Families; two organizations teaching and healing children through the arts. In 2007 she was awarded a certificate of recognition by Mayor Bloomberg, as part of Immigrant History Week, for her arts work in immigrant communities. She has lead theater programs at public schools, for community groups, at juvenile detention facilities, for government agencies, and with the general public. She is a keynote speaker and has presented at various conferences.
Kayhan served as an artistic consultant and researcher for Barnard College’s “Storytelling Project”, an initiative which links research to practice through the development of a curriculum to teach about race, racism, and social justice using storytelling and the arts. She is currently co-editing a volume of essays, published by Routledge in 2008, Telling Stories to Change the World: Global Voices on the Power of Narrative to Build Community and Make Social Justice Claims, and is writing an ESL TV show for the City of New York. She is a member of the Dramatists’ Guild.
Kayhan seeks to use theater to activate audiences and transform society.