Seen on: Thursday, 4/09/26.
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| Azadeh Kangarani. Photo by Nathan Zhe. |
Plot and Background
As part of the Frigid/New York City Fringe Festival, Azadeh Kangarini's autobiographical one-woman show plays at the Chain Theatre. Her piece follows the path of her silence in the face of externalized and internalized misogyny through the various men whose molestations through the years of her life have made her question herself and her own relationship with her body.Thoughts:
Azadeh Kangarani stands onstage in slacks and a burnt orange blouse. She is calm, warm, collected. A woman who knows who she is and loves who she is. Behind her are six vertical mirrors: some single pieces, some a column of smaller mirrors. She lifts the seventh mirror, a horizontal one leaning at her side, and walks through the audience, asking us "How often do you look at your face?" As she tells her story, a mix of memories from the most recent--an encounter with a female pilot whose sight forces Kangarani to reckon with her own internal biases--to the most distant--a memory of a man exposing himself to her when she was only nine years old. For each story she tells, she wrestles with her guilt over how many times she held her tongue as men took advantage of her. Why was she silent each time? Why didn't she let the world know about yet another violation? Silence after silence, echoing through her life. For each memory, one of the vertical mirrors behind her is assigned an identity and an initial for his name. Though each represents a man who tried to steal her autonomy, who pressured her to quash her own sense of her worth and voice, they are all still each a mirror. She has named them, but if she turns to look at them dead on, she will see only herself. Even this, the performance of her wrestling with her self-imposed guilt, has her seeing her own face as the perpetrator of her trauma. She's not being fair to herself. But it's an honest examination of how survivors of this sort of assault do not know how to be fair to themselves. Her piece brings her face to face with her own shames, but also her survival of each of them. And she invites the audience to do the same: face that in ourselves which we are most afraid to see, and discover that in ourselves that we most love to see. The silence doesn't have to echo on, once we are able to speak.
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Running: Now playing at The Chain Theatre Mainstage (FRIGID New York/New York City Fringe Festival) - Opening: April 5, 2026. Closing: April 14, 2026.
Category: play
Length: 1 hour, no intermission.
Creative Team
Playwright and Performer: Azadeh Kangarini
Team: Adrienne Siow (Stage Manager), Peta Mrdjen (Sound), Mara Ingea (Scenic).
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| Azadeh Kangarini. Photo by Nathan Zhe. |
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