Kayhan Irani

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, 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 We’ve Come Undone, highlighting 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. 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, Telling Stories to Change the World: Global Voices on the Power of Narrative to Build Community and Make Social Justice Claims (Routledge 2008), and is writing an ESL TV show for the City of New York. She is a member of the Dramatists’ Guild.