Mozhdeh Rahmanzaei’s, FREEDOM IN LIMBO, is without any doubt, incredibly dark for her. She’s been living it. Her story, I mean. Or rather, her life. But it’s terrifying for us too. For, it is a true and current-to-this-very-moment, record of what’s she faces. A fight for freedom to merely exist. Skating on very thin ice that could crack at any moment. Where she could drown. Horribly.
FREEDOM IN LIMBO is not simply about the right to be a fully voiced artist.
Which she cannot do in her home country of Iran. In fact, not only has she been censored and suppressed by her government, she is threatened with imprisonment and even death. Just for speaking up. For writing words on paper. For uttering any truth. This is her actual reality. So she has left her beloved home country, and is now living in a foreign place, in limbo, as she awaits her next completely, uncertain, step.
This show speaks to everything Westerners, who still care, and care to look, and hear, of the mass murders perpetrated by a brutal theocracy. All in the name of the unfathomable. Throughout, Rahmanzaei, weaves her personal journey for freedom, inside protest photos, sanctioned executions, the Women Life Freedom movement, and what existing as an artist actually means for her. And everyone. In a word – SILENCE. But she is determined to speak nevertheless.
Rahmanzaei is hard as nails and soft as a flower petal, all at once in her delivery. She has set a very distinctive stage in the choreography of her piece. It is incredibly honest. Painfully raw. And as forceful as a person with nothing and everything to lose must communicate. Jesimiel Jenkins’ direction imbues so much meaning in the physicality of his actor/writer/producer. Every step, every bit, pulsates with the imminent moment.
FREEDOM IN LIMBO is a story of incredible courage.
And although the artist herself claims to not have the same as her fellow countrymen and women who have endured and died under a brutal regime. She has nevertheless looked at terror in the face and stared right back at it. Her story is also a warning, to us all, here and now. Because, it is not isolated, a reminder that the pistol is currently aiming at us too.
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.
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Written, Produced and Performed by Mozhdeh (Julia) Rahmanzaei. Directed by Jesimiel Jenkins. With Deja Culver as: The Voices.
About the Project
A true story. From fighting for freedom in a small town in my homeland, Iran, to the slow silencing of my voice, and the quiet death of my words in the so-called bright capital of my country, where darkness was hidden beneath the light. All those hidden, breathless, secret journeys in silence. To that 5 a.m, and a one-way ticket to a new land. A place where freedom is in limbo for me. It remains in limbo. Like walking on a tightrope, where every moment there is a risk of falling.
Learn More at uwdrama.org/julia-rahmanzaei