Sohrabkoshi — The Slaying of Sohrab

سهراب‌کشی · A stage reading of Bahram Beyzai's play

– Roter Vogel schwebt über drei Figuren, die eine verletzte liegende Person umgeben. Titeltext: Die Tötung von Sohrab. Darsteller*innen: Farid Tehrani, Mahtab

In Ferdowsi's "Shahnameh", Rostam kills Sohrab without knowing the young warrior is his own son. Bahram Beyzai's Sohrabkoshi begins from a harder premise: what if he knew?

The title itself is an accusation. Not Rostam and Sohrab, but Sohrabkoshi — the killing of Sohrab. A name for an act, and for someone who carried it out.

Written by Bahram Beyzai — among the most consequential figures in Iranian theatre and cinema — and published in 2010, Sohrabkoshi returns to the most devastating episode of the Shahnameh and reopens it as a case that was never properly heard. Beyzai's Rostam has known all along that he has a son. What follows is less a duel than an account from backstage: the messages that arrive too late or never arrive at all, the court interests quietly served by a young man's death, the many hands that shape a killing while touching no weapon.

A stage reading strips the theatre back to its two irreducible elements: the text and the voice. No set, no costume, no spectacle — three performers and some of the most rhythmically demanding Persian written for the stage in the last half-century. Beyzai's language is dense, formal, and deeply musical; heard aloud, it does most of the work that scenery usually does.

Mahtab Nasirpour — Actress · Director Three decades across Iranian theatre, film, and television, in work including I Am Taraneh, 15, In the Name of the Father, and Tehran 1500, alongside stage roles in Mohammad Rahmanian's productions.

Faeze Qasemi — Actress · Director · Screenwriter Berlin-based. She came to the stage through Mohammad Rahmanian's The Forgetful Woman and has led three productions directed by Mahtab Nasirpour. She also studied under Zohreh Shokoufandeh and Iraj Rezaee, two of the defining figures of Iranian dubbing.

Farid Tehrani — Director A graduate in dramatic arts now based in Budapest, where he works in independent Persian-language theatre. His recent productions include a bilingual staging of Mohammad Rahmanian's Joan of Arc in Fire, performed in Persian and Hungarian by two actresses in parallel.

Next date:

• Date Friday, 18/September/2026 19:30 ( 1 more date )
• Venue Acud
• Address Veteranenstraße 21, 10119 Berlin-Mitte