Abstract: This review examines Bird of Dawn: A Century of Song and Struggle in Iran, a multilingual folk musical created by Alborz Ghandehari that traces more than a century of Iranian democratic struggles through protest songs. Drawing on performance studies scholarship, the review argues that the production transforms songs into embodied archives of cultural memory and political resistance. By reanimating historical repertoires through performance, Bird of Dawn invites audiences to witness freedom not as an abstract ideal but as a living, collective, and unfinished cultural practice.

I saw Bird of Dawn: A Century of Song and Struggle in Iran twice on the same day at Highways Performance Space in Santa Monica. The first time, I cried through nearly the entire production. The second time, I found myself watching differently—not simply as an audience member overtaken by emotion, but as a performance studies scholar, an Iranian American, a historian of cultural resistance, and a witness to a century of songs that have carried the aspirations, griefs, and unfinished freedoms of generations of Iranians. By the second viewing, I was asking a different question: Why did this performance affect me so profoundly?

The answer lies not only in the extraordinary music or the ambitious historical scope of the work. Rather, Bird of Dawn accomplishes something rare in contemporary political theatre: it stages the social life of songs. It dramatizes how songs emerge from movements, circulate through communities, survive repression, and become repositories of collective memory. The production invites audiences not merely to hear protest songs but to inhabit the historical moments that gave birth to them.

Performance studies scholars have long argued that performance functions as a repository of cultural memory. Diana Taylor distinguishes between the archive—the supposedly stable realm of documents—and the repertoire, the embodied transmission of knowledge through gesture, song, dance, and performance (Taylor, 2003). Bird of Dawn operates precisely within this repertoire. The production does not simply narrate a century of Iranian protest songs; it performs their transmission. Songs move from one generation to another, from poet to singer, from political prisoner to daughter, from revolutionary movement to diaspora stage. The audience experiences history not as information but as embodied memory.

In this sense, the production transforms the stage into what Taylor calls a site of "acts of transfer," where political knowledge, affect, and collective identity move across generations. The result is especially significant for diasporic audiences, whose relationships to homeland histories are often mediated through stories, recordings, fragments, and inherited memories rather than direct experience.

Created by Alborz Ghandehari and presented by Ta'atre Shahr Productions and Highways, Bird of Dawn is described as "a multilingual folk musical that tells the story of Iranians' ongoing struggle for a democratic society through over a hundred years of protest songs." The production assembles historical figures, fictional narrators, political prisoners, podcasters, mothers, daughters, ghosts, and revolutionaries into a series of interconnected musical vignettes that move from the 1906-11 Constitutional Revolution to the 2023 Woman, Life, Freedom movement and beyond. Rather than offering a linear national history, Ghandehari, who is also a scholar of Iranian social movements (2026), performs a repertoire of embodied memory—a living archive transmitted through voices, bodies, melodies, and collective participation.

Directed and produced by Ghandehari, who wrote the book of the musical, with music direction by Baran Ehsaei and choreography by Mida Maleki, Sarah Chang Tadayon, and Daniella Urbina, the production mobilizes an impressive ensemble. Alireza Payandeh appears as Aref the Poet and Political Prisoner; Baran Ehsaei embodies both the legendary singer Ghamar and Roya, a daughter of the diaspora; Mida Maleki plays Storyteller, Sholeh, and Ghogha Singer; Sarah Chang Tadayon and Parinaz Yazdanparast serve as storytellers and podcasters; Afsaneh Ghazavi appears as Parvin and Political Prisoner; Daniella Urbina performs as Podcaster and Storyteller; Samia Karimi appears as the symbolic Bird of Dawn; and Niyayesh Dolatshahi leads Kurdish dance sequences. Ghandehari himself portrays both Bahar and Khosrow, figures who anchor the production's century-long conversation about freedom.

One of the production's most moving achievements is its dramatization of encounters between artists whose names often appear in history books but rarely emerge as fully embodied people. We witness the poet Malek o Shoara'ye Bahar meeting singer Ghamar-olmoluk Vaziri during the 1906-11 Iranian Revolution. Bahar is a canonical poet and visionary, and Vaziri is an iconic and pathbreaking artist. We see the excitement, uncertainty, and courage involved in creating art under authoritarian conditions. The famous song "Morghe Sahar" ("Bird of Dawn") is not presented as a timeless artifact but as a living act of political imagination. When Bahar and Ghamar sing:

"Bird of Dawn, cry out!
Break and overturn this cage"

Richard Schechner's concept of "restored behavior" is especially useful here. For Schechner (1985), performances are never entirely original; they are made from behaviors, gestures, and scripts that have been performed before and reactivated in new contexts. The songs in Bird of Dawn are restored behaviors par excellence. "Morghe Sahar" is not merely reproduced. It is re-performed within a contemporary moment of democratic struggle. Likewise, songs from the Constitutional Revolution, the revolutionary movements of the 1970s, Kurdish liberation struggles, and the Woman, Life, Freedom movement are not presented as museum artifacts. They are reanimated. Their meanings shift as they encounter contemporary audiences living through new crises.

The production therefore demonstrates that historical memory is not preservation but reactivation. Every performance asks anew what freedom might mean under present conditions.

Performance studies scholars have long argued that performance constitutes a mode of historical transmission. What Bird of Dawn demonstrates so powerfully is that songs are not merely reflections of political movements; they are among the mechanisms through which movements imagine themselves into existence. The production repeatedly stages the relationship between artistic expression and collective action, revealing songs as performative acts that help create publics, solidarities, and political futures.

The production's visual language contributes significantly to this effect. Hamoun Dolatshahi's projections of early twentieth-century Iran and Shaghayegh Cyrous's projections related to Woman, Life, Freedom create an evocative multimedia environment in which historical eras collapse into one another. Scenes flow from constitutionalist gatherings to revolutionary rallies, from prison cells to contemporary streets, creating what José Esteban Muñoz might describe as a horizon of political futurity. The stage becomes a site where past struggles remain unfinished and future freedoms remain imaginable.

Several sequences stand out as especially memorable. A rendition of Aref Ghazvini's "Az Khoone Javanaan-e Vatan" ("From the Blood of the Homeland's Youth") evokes the sacrifices of constitutionalist martyrs through lyrics in which "tulips have bloomed" from the blood of the nation's youth. The revolutionary anthem "Aftabkaran-e Jangal" ("The Sun Planters") resurrects memories of leftist resistance movements through imagery of people who "plant sunlight in the mountains." The ensemble performance of "Bella Ciao" links Iranian struggles to international traditions of anti-fascist resistance, transforming the theatre into a transnational space of solidarity.

The inclusion of Shervin Hajipour's "Baraye" proved especially affecting. As Khosrow/Alborz sings:

"For the sake of dancing in the alleys"
"For my sister, your sister, our sisters"

Equally significant is the production's commitment to Kurdish presence and Kurdish political imagination. Too often, performances about Iranian democracy reproduce Persian-centered narratives. Bird of Dawn actively resists this tendency. Kurdish dance traditions, Kurdish music, and the slogan "Jin, Jiyan, Azadî" are woven into the production's dramaturgy rather than appearing as symbolic gestures. The Kurdish dimension remains alive throughout the work, reminding audiences that contemporary democratic struggles in Iran cannot be understood without attention to Kurdish activism, sacrifice, and visions of self-determination. The performance's inclusion of songs that invoke Zagros landscapes and Kurdish resistance situates Kurdish experiences at the heart of the story rather than at its margins.

Dwight Conquergood's call for "co-performative witnessing" also helps explain the ethical force of the production (Conquergood, 2002). Rather than speaking about marginalized communities from a distance, Bird of Dawn invites audiences into a relationship of witness. Kurdish resistance, feminist organizing, labor struggles, and political imprisonment are not reduced to sociological data. They appear through bodies, voices, songs, and movement. The audience becomes implicated in the act of remembering.

As an Iranian American scholar whose work has explored narradrama, performance, and the politics of storytelling, I found myself responding not simply as a spectator but as a witness-participant. The production did not ask me to observe history; it asked me to enter into a living relationship with it.

The timing of the production matters profoundly. The musical premiered amid the war crises of 2026, a moment marked by mass protests, state violence, imperial bombing and renewed international debates about Iran's future. As Alborz Ghandehari has argued elsewhere, the January uprising that ended in the slaughter of thousands must be understood not simply through the lens of geopolitical conflict (the MAGA and MIGA imposed frame) but through the democratic aspirations of feminist groups, labor unions, students, writers, Kurdish and Baluch activists, and other grassroots movements seeking a radically democratic future. The production echoes these arguments by foregrounding ordinary people rather than political elites and by insisting that democratic futures emerge from collective struggle rather than authoritarian saviors.

Watching Bird of Dawn in 2026 therefore involved a difficult emotional contradiction. The production repeatedly transported us into moments of revolutionary possibility: the Constitutional Revolution, the anti-colonial and leftist movements of the twentieth century, the revolutionary optimism of 1978 before the consolidation of Islamic fundamentalism, and the Woman, Life, Freedom uprising. Yet we watched these scenes while carrying knowledge of ongoing war, repression, fascism, and authoritarian resurgence across the globe. In the United States, the rise of MAGA politics continues to threaten democratic institutions. In Iran, state violence persists. The performance asks audiences to inhabit hope without denying catastrophe.

The tears were not merely responses to beautiful music. They emerged from what Jill Dolan (2005) calls the "utopian performative"—those fleeting moments in performance when audiences experience, however briefly, the possibility of a better world. Throughout the evening, moments of collective singing, ensemble movement, and intergenerational dialogue created precisely such experiences. The performance did not deny grief. Nor did it offer naïve optimism. Instead, it created temporary spaces in which democratic futures could once again become imaginable.

This was especially powerful in the context of 2026. We watched a production about revolutionary hope while carrying the weight of war, authoritarian resurgence, mass death, and the global rise of reactionary politics. We watched scenes of solidarity while many of us were grieving contemporary catastrophes. Yet Bird of Dawn continually pulled us back toward the possibility of collective action.

Dolan argues that such moments do not solve political problems. Rather, they allow audiences to feel the possibility of social transformation. That feeling mattered profoundly in this room.

The tears, again, were not merely responses to beautiful music. They emerged from witnessing a younger generation of Iranian artists embodying freedom so fully and so unapologetically. Many members of the ensemble are younger than my generation. Watching them sing, dance, debate, remember, and dream felt like witnessing a living transmission of political desire across generations. The performance reminded me that freedom is not merely a political demand; it is also a cultural practice, a repertoire that survives through storytelling, music, humor, mourning, and collective imagination.

The venue itself amplified this significance. Highways has long served as one of Los Angeles's most important homes for experimental, socially engaged, and intersectional performance. Presenting Bird of Dawn in this space placed Iranian struggles into conversation with broader traditions of performance activism, queer performance, anti-racist theatre, and community-based art making. The result was not simply an Iranian story but a diasporic and global one.

I attended the performance with Janet Afary, whose scholarship on the Constitutional Revolution, satire, and Iranian social movements has shaped generations of researchers. Together we have written about satire, art, anti-colonial struggles, and Iranian diaspora identities. We entered the theatre carrying decades of intellectual and political investment in these histories. Yet what moved us most was not historical accuracy alone, though the production is deeply researched. It was the sensation of seeing those histories breathe.

Performance studies often speaks of "restored behavior," Richard Schechner's term for actions repeated across time and reactivated in new contexts. Bird of Dawn stages precisely this process. The songs are restored behaviors. The dances are restored behaviors. The gestures of resistance are restored behaviors. But the production demonstrates that restoration is never repetition alone. Every performance transforms the archive it inherits.

By the end of the musical, as the ensemble raised "Sorude Zendegi" ("Anthem of Life") and invoked Mahsa, Nika, and the slogan "Woman. Life. Freedom," the audience was no longer simply watching history. We had become participants in a century-long conversation about liberation.

José Esteban Muñoz's conception of hope as a mode of futurity also resonates deeply with the production. For Muñoz (2009), hope is not escapism but a critical orientation toward the future. It emerges through collective cultural practices that allow people to imagine worlds not yet realized. Bird of Dawn repeatedly stages this kind of futurity. Its songs refuse closure. They insist that unfinished struggles remain unfinished possibilities.

This is perhaps why the final chorus felt less like an ending than a continuation. The production suggests that freedom exists not only as a political objective but as a recurring cultural practice. Songs keep returning because freedom keeps returning as a demand.

For a brief evening at Highways, freedom ceased to be an abstraction. It became a chorus.

And the chorus remains unfinished.

References

Afary, J. (1996) The Iranian Constitutional Revolution: Grassroots Democracy, Social Democracy, and the Origins of Feminism. Columbia UP

Afary, J. & Afary, K. (2021) Molla Nasreddin: The Making of A Modern Trickster. Edinburgh UP.

Conquergood, D. (2002). "Performance studies: Interventions and radical research." TDR: The Drama Review, 46(2), 145-156.

Dolan, J. (2005). Utopia in Performance: Finding Hope at the Theater. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

Ghandehari, A. (2026) Bird of Dawn: A Century of Song and Struggle in Iran. Highways Performance, Los Angeles June 19-20, 2026

Ghandehari, A. (2026). "Neither Khamenei, Trump, nor Shah: Towards a Roadmap for Democracy in Iran." The New Arab, January 17, 2026.

Ghandehari, A. (2026). Post/Revolutionary Conditions: Renewed Visions of the Iranian Freedom Struggle. Northwestern UP.

Muñoz, J. E. (2009). Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity. New York: New York University Press.

Schechner, R. (1985). Between Theater and Anthropology. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Shirazi, Z., & Afary, K. (2020). Iranian Diaspora Identities: Stories and Songs. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.

Taylor, D. (2003). The Archive and the Repertoire: Performing Cultural Memory in the Americas. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.