The Team

Nasim Khosravi

Nasim Khosravi is a playwright, poet, director, and theatre-maker with over two decades of experience in storytelling through performance. Born in southern Iran, she studied literature and contemporary/experimental theatre before her work was banned due to her activism for women’s rights.

A dedicated advocate for gender equality, Nasim collaborated with the One Million Signatures Campaign for the Repeal of Discriminatory Laws in Iran. She conducted feminist playwriting workshops and designed and directed eleven street theatre performances to raise awareness for women’s rights. Adapting Augusto Boal’s Invisible Theatre techniques to Iran’s socio-political context, she used performance as a powerful tool for resistance. Her final staged work in Iran, No Swinging Allowed (Tehran, March 2008), was banned after its premiere.

After emigrating to Australia, Nasim founded Baran Theatre, a platform for cross-cultural fusion and innovative, interactive theatre, distinguished by its poetic tone. Baran’s debut production, Vis and Ramin, premiered in 2016 at Metro Arts and later toured to Footscray Community Arts Centre in Melbourne (2017). In 2019, she co-wrote, co-produced, and directed Tower of Babel, performed at Metro Arts and nominated for a Matilda Award for Best Video Design. She is currently developing Baran’s latest production, The Rhythm of Absence.

Beyond her independent work, Nasim served as a Matilda Awards judge for six years and, in 2018, was Assistant Director for Bell Shakespeare’s national tour of Julius Caesar. She also participated in the Contemporary Asian Australian Performance (CAAP) Directors Initiative. Her work often reimagines religious and mythological figures through a feminist lens, exploring characters such as Mary, Hagar, Venus, and Ishtar in her dramatic works.

James Cunningham

James Cunningham is a performance, movement, video and networked performance artist working in social, environmental and architectural surroundings, exploring the
limits of bodily perception, performativity and the relationality of one’s self with others,
objects, and environment. He graduated in Dance Performance from the Centre for
the Performing Arts, Adelaide, in 1988.
Cunningham has been co-Artistic Director with Suzon Fuks of Igneous Inc. since 1997.
With Igneous, he has co-choreographed and performed in stage shows, performance
installations, video-dance works and networked/online performances in festivals and
cities around the world, including Nuit Blanche Toronto (“Mirage”), BIAM Paris (“Body
in Question”), and Theater Der Welt Stuttgart (“Liquid Skin”).

His website documents his live performances, walking arts practice, and video artworks since 2007.

Hossein Khosravi

Born in Iran in 1987, Hossein Khosravi later emigrated to Brisbane where he now works as a Designer. Having obtained a Bachelor of Architecture in 2012, his unique approach to design combines cultural and theoretical knowledge with practical experience in design, fabrication and 3D visualisation. Hossein supports Baran’s visual design and technical operations, creating new avenues and contemporary techniques for the theater’s dramatic works.

Hiwa Michaeli

Hiwa was born in 1980 in Tehran, Iran. Hiwa is a writer and a researcher in the field of comparative literature. Since 2012, he has been working on his doctoral dissertation at Freie Universität of Berlin. As a writer his mediums include poetry, drama, and short stories. In drama, he explores situations in which the simplest of events puts one in front of the most important choices that connect one’s subjective world in touch with the realm of intersubjectivity in society. His first collaboration with Nasim Khosravi goes back to 2002 in the “Esc” a play written by Hiwa with Nasim as the leading actor. Their next work was co-writing of the play Solar Eclipse; directed by Nasim in 2004. Their collaboration continued ever since as co-directors and co-writers. Their recent work includes co-writing of a modern dramatization of Vis and Ramin, with Baran Theatre Group in which Hiwa also collaborates as the translator of the work.

Freddy Komp

Freddy Komp works in theatre and event production and loves delving into multi
disciplinary forays across AV, Set, and Lighting Design and in AV Visual Arts
Installations (including Living Rocks: A Fragment of the Universe at Venice Biennale
2019 and ZKM Karlsruhe’s “The Beauty of Early Life” 2022, as well as the Video
Systems Designer for the Australian Pavilion at the Venice Architectural Biennale
2023), and in stage/production management. He is the recipient of the 2022 and 2023
Matilda Award for Video Design, and has been nominated for 2 Groundling and 4
Matilda Awards. He loves a good challenge that demands a variety of skills as well as
creative problem solving, and led the production teams at Adelaide Film Festival
(2015-2018) and Hybrid World Adelaide (2017+2018) before returning to Queensland
(as technical manager for Brisbane Festival 19’s Arcadia, and technical director for
Little Red Company’s first Lord Mayor’s Christmas Carols 2021).
Freddy has worked with accomplished directors including Bridget Boyle, Margi Brown
Ash, Shaun Charles, Daniel Evans, David Fenton, Michael Futcher, Eugene Gilfedder,
Nasim Khosravi, Benjamin Knapton, Andy Packer, Benjamin Schostakowski, Leah
Shelton, Garry Stewart, and Genevieve Trace.

Greg Manning

Greg Manning was born in Mackay, in Queensland, and has a background in environmental engineering, public health and human rights. He is a poet and concept artist, who engages in collaborative works, where conflicted and conflicting demographics explore their fragile experience of shared identity. Greg is a bus driver in Brisbane, currently exploring the role of place names in the city’s language.