Novid Parsi

Novid Parsi

Novid Parsi's recent plays include The Life You Gave Me, winner of the Crossroads Project's Diverse Voices Playwriting Initiative; Remains and Returns, winner of the Ashland New Plays Festival; and Through the Elevated Line, Jeff Award nominee for best new work. Novid's plays have been produced or developed by Boise Contemporary Theater, Golden Thread Productions, The New Group, Paines Plough,...
Novid Parsi's recent plays include The Life You Gave Me, winner of the Crossroads Project's Diverse Voices Playwriting Initiative; Remains and Returns, winner of the Ashland New Plays Festival; and Through the Elevated Line, Jeff Award nominee for best new work. Novid's plays have been produced or developed by Boise Contemporary Theater, Golden Thread Productions, The New Group, Paines Plough, Playwrights Foundation, Queens Theatre, Silk Road Rising, and the St. Louis Shakespeare Festival, among others. Novid is a two-time finalist for the Bay Area Playwrights Festival and the Woodward/Newman Award, a finalist for Amphibian Stage's SparkFest and Broad Horizons’ New Voices, and a semifinalist for the New American Voices Playwriting Festival and the O’Neill National Playwrights Conference.

Plays

  • The Life You Gave Me by Novid Parsi
    Cast: 
    4
    ·
    Genre: dark comedy, drama + 2 more
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    Keyword: family, parent-child relationships + 5 more
    Genre: dark comedy, drama, experimental, tragedy
    Keyword: family, parent-child relationships, domestic violence, LGBTQ, Iran, Middle East, bipoc
    A son tries to save his mother. She has other ideas. So do two mysterious strangers who watch the play—and ask the son to tell the story again and again until he gets it right, whatever right might be.
  • Remains and Returns by Novid Parsi
    Recommendations: 4
    ·
    Cast: 
    4
    ·
    Genre: drama
    ·
    Keyword: family, LGBTQ + 8 more
    Genre: drama
    Keyword: family, LGBTQ, gay, Iran, Middle East, aging, coming out, Politics, parent-child relationships, bipoc
    In 2018, as the Shirvani family talks about nothing and everything, two middle-aged brothers confront their elderly parents about impending realities. Thirty years earlier, the parents confront their teen sons about their own hopes for their children’s futures. Returning to 2018, Remains and Returns considers how we deny our pasts, and how our pasts endure.
  • The Innkeepers by Novid Parsi
    Recommendations: 3
    ·
    Cast: 
    5
    ·
    Genre: drama, mystery/thriller + 1 more
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    Keyword: Chicago, Iranian-American + 6 more
    Genre: drama, mystery/thriller, political
    Keyword: Chicago, Iranian-American, Immigrants, immigration, police, mystery, thriller, bipoc
    When four guests arrive at a remote rural inn for what appears to be a weekend getaway, the innkeeper, Arzu Amiri, reveals they are all bound together by a terrible event involving her son 17 years earlier. The characters enact and re-enact their shifting versions of what happened until Arzu arrives at her own truth and her own devastating decision.
  • Through the Elevated Line by Novid Parsi
    Recommendations: 1
    ·
    Cast: 
    7
    ·
    Genre: drama
    ·
    Keyword: Iran, immigration + 8 more
    Genre: drama
    Keyword: Iran, immigration, gay, asylum, LGBTQ, Chicago, Streetcar Named Desire, Tennessee Williams, family, bipoc
    Having fled Iran where he was imprisoned for being a gay man, a damaged Razi arrives at his sister’s Chicago doorstep only to disrupt the life she and her American husband have built together. With echoes of A Streetcar Named Desire, Through the Elevated Line probes the boundaries between family, loss, prejudice, and desire.
  • Take This World by Novid Parsi
    Cast: 
    4
    ·
    Genre: drama
    ·
    Keyword: family, developmental disability + 7 more
    Genre: drama
    Keyword: family, developmental disability, mother and son, parent-child relationships, Suburbs, color blind, violence, siblings, Mental Health
    Roya has made a name as a writer by chronicling her experience raising her severely impaired son, Nicholas. Now she refuses to acknowledge that, as an adult, the increasingly violent Nicholas may be beyond her—or perhaps anyone's—control.
  • Our Mother's Meal by Novid Parsi
    Cast: 
    6
    ·
    Genre: drama
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    Keyword: BIPOC stories, family drama + 4 more
    Genre: drama
    Keyword: BIPOC stories, family drama, Iran, Iranian-American, Middle East, intergenerational conflict
    Throughout one long day, while an Iranian-American mother tirelessly cooks and cooks, her three children traipse back to the family home with their very American attitudes, expectations, and conflicts. As the day progresses, she must reckon with an escalating crisis that threatens the foundation of their lives.
  • Those Ills We Have by Novid Parsi
    Recommendations: 1
    ·
    Cast: 
    3
    ·
    Genre: drama
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    Keyword: pain, Chronic Pain + 8 more
    Genre: drama
    Keyword: pain, Chronic Pain, Chronic Illness, Relationships, Therapy, Iran, Iranian, Latino, interracial relationships, bipoc
    Farid is in pain, and has been for six years. Now that everything is on the line, can Diego, the pain management guru, help Farid identify the root cause of his pain? Is it his Iranian family’s disappointment in his life choices? Is it the pressures of his interracial marriage? Or is it all just in his head?