Emruz Festival in collaboration with Rattlestick Playwrights Theater:
Director/Performer Deniz Khateri will be in conversation with actor Yekta Khaghani about the piece
Behold the Man
Language: English Duration: 20 minutes Time: 12:00 PM EST, 5:00 AM GMT 8:30 PM Tehran
Please join us via Instagram Live ( You will need your phone to view this) @emruzfest.nyc
Deniz Khateri (Director/Performer) Trained as a theatre artist in Iran, Deniz moved to the US in 2013 to experience a new world of art in America. As a playwright, her recent plays have been workshopped and performed at schools of the Boston area including Harvard Graduate School, University of Massachusetts and Boston University. As an actor, she has performed extensively in Tehran and Boston with theatre companies such as Arts Emerson, Nora and underground railway theatre, Bridge Repertory, Apollinaire, Boston Playwrights', Gardzienice theatre, etc. Deniz started her journey of an experiment wit her play “Cellos’ Dialogue” in Boston and the play made its New York Premier in January 2020 a year after she moved to New York. Her Award-Winning webseries“Diasporan” is currently available on YouTube. denizkhateri.com
Yekta Khaghani (Actor) is an Iranian actor and playwright based in New York City. She earned a BA in Dramatic Literature from Tehran University of Art in 2009, an opportune moment in Iran’s thriving theatre scene, whereupon she directed and acted in a wide variety of plays. Since Yekta has moved to the US in 2016, she has created and acted in numerous theatrical performances for young audiences and has adapted the series Fairy Tales from Greater Iran for audiobooks and the stage. Her recent credits include: Directing the play “Cellos’ Dialogue” at the Exponential Festival in NYC and writing a documentary play named “T.B” under the residency at Downtown Art Theater. She reached a semifinalist at the 2020 National Playwrights Conference at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center.
Back in Iran, she was an active member of an underground theater group named, “Khane” meaning home, and with the current state of affairs between East and West, Yekta stands in a unique place to use her voice to bring the two closer.
Bahar Royaee (Composer/Sound Designer) Born and raised in Iran, Bahar Royaee is a composer of concert and incidental music. Before learning and practicing the principals of music composition, Bahar Royaee, practiced electronic engineering, back in Tehran, Iran. The Boston Arts Review praised Bahar’s “haunting sound design” in her work with live the- atre. In 2017, Bahar was awarded from the Krourian Electroacoustic Competition in Iran and won the Roger Sessions Memorial Composition Award - the top composition prize at Boston Conservatory. She is the first recipient of The Walter W. Harp Music and Society Award, and the John Bavicchi Memorial Prize, both from Berklee College of Music. In the realm of concert music, Bahar’s compositions have been performed worldwide, includ- ing Italy, Greece, Iran, and the USA. Excited to be a part of Cellos’ Dialogue, she is pursuing a Ph.D. in composition from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.