https://www.rahaleh.com/directing daily 0.75 2019-12-17 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5df390653b45611b9a4c9cf1/1576950360151-6MFLN2XEG3HISMZ9VGLM/Bright+Room.jpg Directing - A Bright Room Called Day by Tony Kushner “Rorschach Theatre is the right company to embrace the overstatement, and director Rahaleh Nassri's production is tough-minded and, in its way, beautiful. Not handsome, and never pretty -- Jacob Muehlhausen's set is a cheap 1930s Berlin room with bad wallpaper and lighting that Nathaniel John Sebastian Sinnott keeps low, whether it's for a candlelight dinner or because everyone's beginning to hide from the Nazis.” — The Washington Post https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5df390653b45611b9a4c9cf1/1576869977663-7P1JXFYBL381H5AY1FG8/Breath%2Bboom.jpg Directing Roxi Trapp Dukes Victorian as Prix in Kia Corthron’s BREATH, BOOM. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5df390653b45611b9a4c9cf1/1576870174700-NVF7R52AFN1CQ3WUP06T/Fucking%2BA.jpg Directing https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5df390653b45611b9a4c9cf1/1576870094315-38CQDB43AGJHUKDVHUBY/That+Face.jpg Directing https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5df390653b45611b9a4c9cf1/1576871967992-5KJHEQ91KETMDZE2RCCL/Benedictus.jpg Directing - Benedictus by Motti Lerner “The setup of "Benedictus" sounds as if it were concocted for one of those geopolitical thrillers you buy in an airport bookstore: On the eve of a threatened U.S. bombing of Iran's nuclear installations, an Israeli arms dealer and an Iranian ayatollah meet secretly at a Benedictine monastery in Rome to try to stop the attack. Iranian-born director Rahaleh Nassri keeps the proceedings on a lucid axis— The Washington Post Michael Kramer and Michael Tolaydo in Benedictus. https://www.rahaleh.com/contact daily 0.75 2021-12-01 https://www.rahaleh.com/acting daily 0.75 2019-12-13 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5df390653b45611b9a4c9cf1/1576773677198-DGI9Q8BN48OIKGY8JHYE/Anna+Christie+Gene+Rahaleh+John.jpg.png Acting Gene Gillette, Rahaleh Nassri, and John O’Creagh https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5df390653b45611b9a4c9cf1/1576773827261-XROM2F39M0NHWAI66DOT/romeo+and+juliet+rehearsal.jpg Acting Fight choreography rehearsal for Romeo & Juliet https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5df390653b45611b9a4c9cf1/1576772116480-MIWK66UU1YMPM1HBQCY6/the%2Bscarlet%2Bletter%2Bpicture.jpg Acting Rahaleh Nassri and Jay O. Dunn https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5df390653b45611b9a4c9cf1/1576771190925-E8IHFJRKI8IDC94JMOQJ/fair+ladies+at+a+game+of+poem+cards.jpg Acting Fair Ladies at a Game of Poem Cards by https://www.rahaleh.com/writing-1 daily 0.75 2020-06-12 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5df390653b45611b9a4c9cf1/1576766415959-7JVA77O2BOVBJQ7KTKG6/Les+justes.jpg Writing https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5df390653b45611b9a4c9cf1/1576272236252-I20XGR3IR4JSDLRZHZUT/Bahman+jalali.jpg Writing - House of Strength a play Inspired by the 1953 Iranian democratic movement raging around her, 15-year-old Eteram courageously disrupts the sanctity of the Zoorkhaneh, literally "house of strength," where her father practices an ancient form of physical, philosophical and spiritual training. Defying her father and the codes of the male sanctum, where even a woman's breath is forbidden, she falls in love with a wrestler bound for America. A lifetime later Iranian-American filmmaker Neda travels to Tehran in the midst of the 2009 uprisings to document the very traditions Eteram was desperate to break. Tensions mount between the distinct strong men who inhabit the Zoorkhaneh and the women who invade their space as the strain of unfulfilled dreams, lost loves and political disappointments reach a breaking point, and the stories of the two eras converge in the House of Strength. Staged Reading: Noor Theatre in Residence at New York Theatre Workshop - November 18, 2013 - directed by Sarna Lapine https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5df390653b45611b9a4c9cf1/1576245151077-1Y1A4MDVSA1MYTMVCCBK/Mt+Kenya+Safari+Club+Logo.jpg Writing - The Safari Club a four part limited series for television In America, no matter how successful you are, you will never be good enough. Following a failed love affair with Audrey Hepburn, legendary film star William Holden escapes Hollywood to rural Kenya and builds a members-only safari resort, but his relentless pursuit of booze and proximity to the world’s elite mires him in a web of corrupt world leaders, titans of industry, and ultimately rogue elements of the CIA. Four part limited series based on actual events. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5df390653b45611b9a4c9cf1/1576768326446-RRSP4XVI7PL1NTSMS3R8/trio%2B3.jpg Writing - Throuple a play Sex historian Viv and her TV actor husband Luka have been together since they were 15. They’ve never been with anyone else until they fall in love, together, with their best friend Mina. To their surprise, Mina reciprocates and they embark on a thrilling courtship. It all goes way better than expected until Viv pushes the threesome to go public. Luka’s pulicity machine can be massaged, but what about Mina’s Middle Eastern parents? Not to mention her Senate job. Can she ever truly commit, and come out? Or is this longtime commitment-phobe slash serial monogamist destined to leave the couple. And if she does, can they ever go back to being just Luka and Viv? https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5df390653b45611b9a4c9cf1/1576767775920-KIJ58MQS8RJ4UND3QCON/Bonded%2Bvisual%2Bart%2Bhuman%2Btrafficking.jpg Writing - Bonded a play BONDED deals with modern day slavery and sex trafficking. The play is set inside a lavish hotel suite in Dubai with an international cast of characters, six women and two men. This is where the upper crust and those who are barely surviving collide, where the horrifying underbelly of globalization and capitalism is at its worst. It is where a protective and well-meaning father may forever lose the trust of his wayward daughter. https://www.rahaleh.com/filmmaking daily 0.75 2020-02-12 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5df390653b45611b9a4c9cf1/1576933598263-V70B03PI50SNXUZI9LIF/SEMI-FINALIST-Blow-UpInternationalArthouseFilmfestChicago-2019.png Filmmaking https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5df390653b45611b9a4c9cf1/1576933958889-YVKKI4UHE40TBKQADTBF/Tiny+Kills+Production+Still+%237.jpg Filmmaking with Luise Zabe https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5df390653b45611b9a4c9cf1/1576934022499-2Q8YNUTMSTZGWUJUKH6L/Tiny+Kills+Production+Still+%234.jpg Filmmaking with Zal Hornbaker (my real-life son!) https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5df390653b45611b9a4c9cf1/1576933875501-B3624JG4K4SHRA2X1G17/Tiny+Kills+Production+Still+%233.png Filmmaking with Peter Rini https://www.rahaleh.com/about daily 0.75 2021-12-01 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5df390653b45611b9a4c9cf1/1576781218717-3LVGWK4HHEZINJWLL6T1/Rahaleh+Nassri+Abby+headshot.jpg About - Washington Post Profile by Eve Zibart Theatrical dialogue is not usually a challenge for Rahaleh Nassri. She speaks four languages, plays out ornate hoaxes in public -- reading fortunes in espresso grounds in a Swiss cafe, impersonating a would-be spy being recruited in Kramerbooks & Afterwords Cafe -- and has performed with the Washington Shakespeare Company. She can also speak "diplomatically," having earned a degree in international affairs from George Washington University and served as press officer at the French Embassy. But when Studio Theatre invited her to direct the Washington premiere of Kia Corthron's "Breath, Boom," a harshly realistic, extremely violent play about Prix (pronounced Pree), the leader of a girl gang in the Bronx, Nassri says she found it overwhelming. The script is curt, often crude, written in dialect and punctuated with the stage direction (Beat). Meaning and emphasis often conflict; "drive-bys" and "hits" are discussed casually while petty annoyances arouse fury. (Corthron, a Cumberland native who lives in Harlem, once said she admires writers who "fiddle with the language, and you have to keep up.") "It's the hardest play I've ever been involved in," says Nassri, 35. "Every word has a purpose; you could see the play 50 times and not hear everything in it. And the language she uses -- it's spot on, spot on." The play, which runs through Jan. 6 at Studio's 2ndstage, begins with a gang member being beaten by her "sisters" on Prix's orders; near the end of the play, the victim's daughter takes vicious revenge, repeatedly slamming Prix's head into a toilet. Prix, who ages from 16 to 30 in 13 quick-cut scenes, is exceptionally ruthless, and there is little hint of redemption in the ending. Casting the play, which has 19 characters played by 12 women and one man, took from July to September. (Nassri made Roxy Trapp-Dukes, who plays Prix, read so often that eventually Trapp-Dukes jokingly accused her of torture.) Nassri, who was born in Tehran, was finishing her master's degree in acting when she was invited to direct "Breath, Boom." She had already accepted a role in the Washington Shakespeare Company's "Caligula," so she was rehearsing and acting even as she was working on the Studio show. Several weeks ago, she started production meetings for "The Skin of Our Teeth," which she's directing for Rorschach Theatre; it opens in February. https://www.rahaleh.com/home daily 1.0 2022-03-19 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5df390653b45611b9a4c9cf1/684e6fed-d4c6-4236-baf8-54db23b9e391/Violent+Femme+E4.jpg Home https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5df390653b45611b9a4c9cf1/1576935771268-VF7IIFRRQB2QAD6JY9NE/Mt+Kenya+Safari+Club+Logo.jpg Home https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5df390653b45611b9a4c9cf1/1576935855820-2S24KXB6X8H90OAXAVNR/Tiny+Kills+Production+Still+%233.png Home https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5df390653b45611b9a4c9cf1/1576935064542-POJ2RNXSOQHJSPU41N6V/anna+christie+best+pic%3F.jpg Home https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5df390653b45611b9a4c9cf1/1576935800492-OL95P6CW9UUC5UM1PQML/Bright+Room.jpg Home