“Parsi is a wonderful writer.”—Time Out
“Beautifully crafted … layered, nuanced writing.”—Windy City Times
The Life You Gave Me, Boise Contemporary Theater (Brooke Burton Photography)
The Life You Gave Me
A son tries to save his mother. She has other ideas. So do two mysterious strangers who watch the play—and ask the son to tell the story again and again until he gets it right, whatever right might be.
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Boise Contemporary Theater: Premiere production
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Ashland New Plays Festival: Winner
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Diverse Voices Playwriting Initiative, Crossroads Project: Winner
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Woodward/Newman Award: Finalist
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Relentless Award: Honorable mention
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​Road Theatre Company, Summer Playwrights Festival: Selected
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Boise Contemporary Theater, BIPOC Playwrights Festival: Selected
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St. Louis Shakespeare Festival, Confluence New Play Festival: Selected
Remains and Returns
In 2018, as the Shirvani family talks about nothing and everything, two middle-aged brothers confront their elderly parents about impending realities. Thirty years earlier, the parents confront their teen sons about their own hopes for their children’s futures. Returning to 2018, Remains and Returns considers how we deny our pasts, and how our pasts endure.
Ashland New Plays Festival: Winner
Bay Area Playwrights Festival: Finalist
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Trinity Theatre Company, New Works Festival: Finalist
O’Neill National Playwrights Conference: Semifinalist
The Innkeepers
When four guests arrive at a remote rural inn for what appears to be a weekend getaway, the innkeeper, Arzu Amiri, reveals they are all bound together by a terrible event involving her son 17 years earlier. The characters enact and re-enact their shifting versions of what happened until Arzu arrives at her own truth and her own devastating decision.
Woodward/Newman Award: Finalist
Amphibian Stage, SparkFest: Finalist
Broad Horizons Theatre Company, New Plays Festival: Finalist
Queens Theatre: Virtual staged reading
Bay Area Playwrights Festival: Semifinalist
O’Neill National Playwrights Conference: Semifinalist
Landing Theatre Company, New American Voices Playwriting Festival: Semifinalist
Through the Elevated Line
Having fled Iran where he was imprisoned for being a gay man, a damaged Razi arrives at his sister’s Chicago doorstep only to disrupt the life she and her American husband have built together. With echoes of A Streetcar Named Desire, Through the Elevated Line probes the boundaries between family, loss, prejudice, and desire.
Silk Road Rising: Premiere production
Jeff Awards: Best New Work nominee
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign: Staged reading
Take This World
Roya has made a name as a writer by chronicling her experience raising her severely impaired son, Nicholas. Now she refuses to acknowledge that, as an adult, the increasingly violent Nicholas may be beyond her—or perhaps anyone's—control.
The New Group: Staged reading
Bay Area Playwrights Festival: Semifinalist
O’Neill National Playwrights Conference: Semifinalist
Our Mother’s Meal
Throughout one long day, while an Iranian-American mother tirelessly cooks and cooks, her three children traipse back to the family home with their very American attitudes, expectations, and conflicts. As the day progresses, she must reckon with an escalating crisis that threatens the foundation of their lives.
Playwrights Foundation: Staged reading
Bay Area Playwrights Festival: Finalist
O’Neill National Playwrights Conference: Semifinalist
Those Ills We Have
Farid is in pain, and has been for six years. Now that everything is on the line, can Diego, the pain management guru, help Farid identify the root cause of his pain? Is it his Iranian family’s disappointment in his life choices? Is it the pressures of his interracial marriage? Or is it all just in his head?
Golden Thread Productions: Staged reading