Nasser Rahmaninejad

Nasser Rahmaninejad started his theater career in 1959 in Iran. In response to the authoritarian cultural policies and censorship of the Shah’s regime, he founded the independent MEHR theatre group in 1966, which later became the Iran Theatre Association, until it was closed down by the Shah’s secret police in 1974. Sentenced to twelve years in prison and ultimately freed by the 1979 revolution, he resumed his theater work, but was soon forced into exile. He has since continued to teach and write; his plays in exile include My Heart, My Homeland (1995), and One Page of Exile (1996). His latest play is Between the Grave and the Moon, produced by the Iranian Studies Program at Stanford University in 2016. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.