Atefeh Zargarzadeh

Atefeh, also known as Aati, is a PhD candidate in Theatre Studies at the University of Victoria. She earned her Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in English Literature and Language in Iran. She is interested in diaspora studies and digital content curation. Her doctoral research project focuses on historicizing nuanced narratives of Middle Eastern theatre practitioners in the diaspora. It explores paradigms of cultural appropriation in theatre production politics, which often propagate and commodify images of Middle Eastern identities within North American intercultural theatre spaces.

In recent years, while working as a teaching assistant and freelance translator, Atefeh has collaborated on various research projects. She has contributed as an event co-coordinator, website content manager, and co-author on the Indigenous Theatre Festival project, as a co-investigator and co-author on the “How We Gather Now” virtual exhibition as part of the Gatherings Project: Archival and Oral Histories of Performance, and as a regional specialist on the Digital Guide to Theatre of the Middle East (DGTOME) project.

Among Atefeh’s published works are “How We Gather Now: A Finding Aid” in Canadian Theatre Review, English translations of three plays—The Hidden Shadow, So, What Do You Want?, and The Ant and the Grasshopper written by the Iranian playwright Simin Amirian (published by Mah Par Publications in 2015 and 2019, Iran)—as well as Persian translations of critical views on Amir Reza Koohestani’s Timeloss, Romeo Castellucci’s Tragedia Endogonidia, and Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard.

Her upcoming publications include “Healing-Healing-ish: Languages Heroes on an Indigenous Theatre Festival” in Performing Knowledge: Utilizing Arts-Based Research in Development and “Language Reawakening through Theatre” in the Routledge Handbook of Arts and Global Development.

Supervisor: Dr. Allana Lindgren