Meet Javaad Alipoor – Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World

December 14, 2023

‘When I started researching the story of Fereydoun Farrokhzad, I came to realise that his murder is the beginning of a series of events that still haunt us today. As the relationship between the Global North and the Global South has shifted, so too has the old sense of the West as a safe place where dissidents can escape to. Put simply, you might leave the dictatorship, but the dictatorship won’t leave you.

Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World is the final part of a trilogy of plays that I began writing in 2017. I knew I wanted this last part to stand alone whilst speaking to the relationship between politics and technology, history and the present that has been the thread connecting all three plays.

Retelling and trying to understand how to retell this story has helped me find a way to do that and to really confront what it means to think of the world as something like the internet, research as a kind of deep dive and tracing the way the ‘democratisation’ of the thirst for knowledge reproduces older networks of power.’ – Javaad Alipoor

Javaad Alipoor is a British-Iranian, Manchester-based and Bradford-built artist, writer, performer and Artistic Director of The Javaad Alipoor Company. He wrote, directed and performed in The Believers Are But Brothers for the stage and for BBC Four; Rich Kids: A History of Shopping Malls, co-created with Kirsty Housley, for the stage and for its digital world tour which included a run at the prestigious Sundance Film Festival; and together with Chris Thorpe he wrote and directed the tri-lingual theatre production, Made of Mannheim, which had its world premiere at Nationaltheater Mannheim and Theaterhaus G7. Javaad was Resident Associate Director at Sheffield Theatres from 2017-18 where he directed Dale Wasserman’s 1963 play, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Prior to this he was Associate Director at Bradford’s Theatre in the Mill from 2015 to 2017

THINGS HIDDEN SINCE THE FOUNDATION OF THE WORLD
19 – 21 Jan 2024
Sydney Festival at the Sydney Opera House
BOOKINGS