Amir Gudarzi was born in Teheran, later graduated at the only school for theatre in Iran at that time and studied scenic writing. On the side, he wrote scripts for TV-series and feature films. Since 2009, Gudarzi has lived in Vienna, Austria, where he studied theatre-, film- and media studies.
In 2017, Gudarzi won the Austrian exil-DramatikerInnenpreis for his play Zwischen uns und denen liegt … In 2018 his performance The Knowledge Tree was shown in Jerusalem. A year later, in 2019, Gudarzi’s play The Assassin’s Castle was invited to the Berlin Stückemarkt. His piece Who cut the cake was shown in London’s Royal Court Theatre in 2020.
Gudarzi won the German “Kleist Förderpreis” with his play Wonderwomb in 2022. The same year he received the German Christian-Dietrich-Grabbe-Preis” for his play Quälbarer Leib – ein Körpergesang. Gudarzi received numerous drama and literary scholarships, including 2018-2020 from the Austrian Chancellery and 2020/2021 from the Literary Colloquium Berlin. His debut novel will be published by dtv in August 2023. In the season 2023/2024 he will be writer in residence (so-called Hausautor) at the Nationaltheater Mannheim in Germany. Amir Gudarzi lives in Vienna, Austria.
The Assassin’s Castle
It is a historical kaleidoscope in which the centuries tumble over each other like different voices. Two sphinxes oversee the events in which speaking mountains meet Mongolian armies, a refugee receives unexpected help, a truck driver makes the acquaintance of three self-confident sex workers. In between, Marco Polo tries to pave himself a way to the East and tourist choirs are stuck in traffic jams on the motorway.
It is almost to be expected that none of this can have a happy ending. The piece deals with the history of a migration to Europe and addresses the fata morgana that Europe, as a place of longing, turns out to be in the course of the piece. It’s a dance of death, a lament.
Wonderwomb
A cemetery en route on the water. An oil tanker somewhere in the Persian or Arabian Gulf. A chorus of dead animals turned to oil is conversing. Conversations are also held on the stock exchanges. Many buy oil stocks as if they know something. An oil tanker is attacked and the price of oil soars.
Stories about: 1 cosmetic products, 2 chewing gum, 3 cars, 4 clothes, 5 candles,
6 grill lighter, 7 Tupperware jars, 8 mattresses, 9 bikini, 10 cleaning supplies.
All of these products are made from oil; this oil comes from the Middle East. The oil brought skyscrapers to Doha and Dubai, but war and exploitation to other countries. Doha and Dubai will either be submerged in water or uninhabitable due to the heat by the end of the century.
People from these countries in the Middle East flee and live elsewhere as refugees. The money that the oil is supposed to bring for them is used by their governments in some other murky way. War is omnipresent and increases the price of oil. Who would have expected that the death of an Iranian through American drones would be raising the price of oil by a few dollars a barrel?
Wonderwomb draws a world around the market economy component of oil, the resulting internal and external destruction, as well as the power struggles over the black gold, always in relation to the Western world and its economic interests.
