ABOUT THE EVENT

Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, the Iranian-born poet, musician and political activist Fereydoun Farrokhzad was known throughout his country as a cultural icon, a sex symbol, a television and radio host, and a chart-topping pop artist whose voice was inextricably bound with the hopes of his generation. Following the Islamic Revolution of 1979, Farrokhzad fled his home to Germany, where he continued to sing at sold-out concerts across Europe. Tragically in 1992, Farrokhzad was found brutally murdered in the kitchen of his apartment in Bonn. That still-unsolved crime lies at the heart of British-Iranian theatermaker Javaad Alipoor's newest interactive work, Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World. The concluding play in a trilogy of shows that encompasses The Believers Are But Brothers and Rich Kids: A History of Shopping Malls in Tehran, Things Hidden “gleefully mashes up genres, smashing together the quiet authority of the murder mystery podcast, the intimacy of autobiographical storytelling, and the visual spectacle of multimedia performance while simultaneously deconstructing each of these forms” (The Guardian). Part comic lecture, part podcast and part musical, Things Hidden is a thrilling ride down the rabbit hole of Wikipedia and murder mystery obsession. Alipoor vividly sorts through the tangle of information available in the post-colonial internet to test the limits of search engine detective work for this decades-old cold case. 

FUNDING

This performance is supported in part by the Maryland State Arts Council and The Morris and Gwendolyn Cafritz Foundation.