A Seattle actor explores what it means to be an artist in exile
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| Julia Rahmanzaei’s student project at the University of Washington, called “No Way to Go, No Way to Stay,” formed the basis of her upcoming solo show “I am an Artist, Where is my Country?” (Christie Zhao). Courtesy The Seattle Times. |
Of all the scenes in Julia Rahmanzaei’s upcoming solo show — scenes with titles like “how to change my blood,” and “Iranian art department” — the one she’s most nervous to perform in public is called “asylum or artist visa.”
The show, “I am an Actress, Where is my Country?” which runs Feb. 27-March 1 at Theatre Off Jackson, tells the story of Rahmanzaei’s life and, she said, of so many silenced Iranian artists. “Asylum or artist visa” — seeking asylum protection or an artist visa — are two options ahead for the actor, who left her home country due to government censorship of her art. Neither one is certain. Her immediate future may be unknown but Rahmanzaei knows art will be a part of it, no matter how difficult — this is what it means, for her, to be an artist in exile.
“I’ve fought for art, for being an artist, since I was 15 years old,” said Rahmanzaei, now 33, who arrived in Seattle around four years ago to attend the University of Washington School of Drama’s professional actor training program, from which she graduated in 2024.
Rahmanzaei hasn’t been back to Iran since relocating; she’s here on a still-valid student visa and isn’t sure what would happen to her, or her passport, should she return home. She’s performing without a hijab, she’s telling her story of Iranian censorship — she just doesn’t know.
Her intentions aren’t political, she said; they’re autobiographical. But she still needs to be careful. She goes by Julia now, but that’s not her given name. When she moved to the U.S. she wanted to make herself somewhat harder to search, should any interested parties back home start Googling.
From the very beginning, Rahmanzaei’s path to artistry was a difficult one.
One day when Rahmanzaei was 9, the head of her school yelled at Rahmanzaei that her hijab wasn’t good enough, saying, “God will punish you and you will go to hell.” She was sent to the prayer room to ask God to forgive her.
As she sat there, unsure what to do, a teacher sat down beside her, gave her a canvas and said, “paint what you don’t like, you will get better.”
“Everything started from that moment,” Rahmanzaei said. That same teacher later asked Rahmanzaei to participate in a school play, and then advocated to Rahmanzaei’s parents that she be allowed to study art at the university level.
Her parents said no. But after much fighting they did let her move to a larger city, from her small hometown, to get a B.A. in French translation from the Azad University of Mashhad (she hoped to work on translating plays).
When she got accepted into a master’s degree program for directing at Azad University of Tehran her father again said no, so Rahmanzaei started going to the capital city secretly.
“My uncle said, ‘Tell your father you’re coming to my house,’” she said. Every Thursday, Rahmanzaei went to her uncle’s house and then took the train to Tehran, went to class on Thursday and Friday, then came home again on Saturday. After six months, Rahmanzaei’s mother again talked to her father for approval, and the subterfuge could end.
While training as a director, Rahmanzaei also performed as an actor but encountered rigid government censorship. To perform theater in Iran, she said, scripts must be approved and rehearsals monitored by the government. A project can be shut down at any time. Three shows she worked on were shut down; one of them, she said, was canceled because she wore red shoes on the poster.
The final straw came as she was completing her master’s thesis.
“The head of the university said to me ‘No,’ because I wanted to use a dance for women, Iranian dance, onstage,” she said. The university also wanted her to change some dialogue in her thesis performance and content in the thesis itself, which discussed, among other issues, how limited options for physical acting training affect women performers in Iran. Women’s bodies were not to be discussed, they said. She said no.
Rahmanzaei was tired. At that point, she’d gotten a scholarship to the University of Washington’s acting program, so she packed her bags.
While at UW, Rahmanzaei tackled roles in plays like Jen Silverman’s “The Moors” and Suzan-Lori Parks’ “In the Blood,” as well as the title role in “The Forgotten History of Mastaneh,” a Seda Iranian Theatre Ensemble production presented at both Seattle Public Theater and Taproot Theatre in 2023.
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| Julia Rahmanzaei performed in Jen Silverman’s play “The Moors” as a student in the University of Washington’s professional actor training program. (Sunny Martini). Courtesy The Seattle Times. |
Acting degree candidates at UW must perform a solo piece before graduation, and a professor encouraged Rahmanzaei to tell her story. The eventual title of her 20-minute solo performance, and the title of her graduate thesis, was “No Way to Go, No Way to Stay.” It’s the story of an artist fleeing censorship at home to then face new challenges, like seeking work as an actor with an accent.
After graduation, Rahmanzaei expanded the show into what is now “I am an Actress, Where is my Country?” Local artist Leah Adcock-Starr, with whom Rahmanzaei had worked while at UW, serves as director and dramaturge.
Rahmanzaei admits she’s nervous to perform it.
But in her case, she said, migration is an act of preservation. So much Iranian art, she said, sits in boxes because its creators cannot present it publicly. Leaving home was a way to safeguard these real stories of culture, history and art.
“I’m an artist. I don’t have a country, and I’m looking for a country,” she said. “I wasn’t allowed to perform what I really want onstage, with freedom, and there are so many people like me in Iran. I want to show all the people here. I don’t want to give up.”
“I am an Actress, Where is my Country?”
Feb. 27-March 1; Theatre Off Jackson, 409 Seventh Ave. S., Seattle.
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