Pedro Kadivar

The author and theatre director Pedro Kadivar was born in Shiraz (Iran) and immigrated to France at the age of 16. After graduating from high school in Paris, he studied literature and theatre at the University of Paris III: Sorbonne Nouvelle. Parallel to his studies, he worked as a directing assistant at various theatres in Paris beginning in 1988. In 1993 he began working as a director (Paris, Théâtre du Rond-Point) with an adaptation of Heiner Müller's Todesanzeige (Obituary). In addition  to his continued work as a director, he also published numerous articles in French theatre magazines. Impressed by Berlin and a meeting with Heiner Müller during a trip organized for young French directors, he settled in Berlin in 1996. He worked as a directing assistant in Berlin and completed his doctorate in February 2002 at the Department of Romance Literatures and Linguistics of the Humboldt University of Berlin (Marcel Proust ou Esthétique de l'entre-deux, Paris, L'Harmattan, 2004). His productions in Berlin include In the Solitude of Cotton Fields by Bernard-Marie Koltès in January 2003, and a staging of his own work Herbststück - An einem Herbsttag irgendwo (Autumn Play – On an autumn day somewhere) at the Pergamon Museum in Berlin in 2006, the first part of a theatre tetralogy for the four seasons, which was published in the original French version in Paris in September 2007. His plays have been honoured with several prizes in France. During the 2011-2012 season, Kadivar was invited to the Odéon-Théâtre de l'Europe in Paris for a series of readings and performances. In July and October 2012, he completed a fellowship in “La Maison des Auteurs” in Limoges (France). In 2014 he received the prizes: “Prix SACD de la dramaturgie de langue française” and L'aide à la création du Centre national du théâtre”. He participated in the Festival d'Avignon in July 2015 with his play Et quand le soleil était au zénith, une voix transperçait le ciel, which he performed and staged with opera singer Katia Guedes. In March-April 2016 he was in “résidence” at La Chartreuse - Centre international of the écritures du spectacles in Avignon. His play Pays was translated into English as part of the “Cross Channel - Best of French Writing” programme (translated by Simon Scardifield under the title Country) and was presented in London (Soho Theatre) in June 2016 and at the Edinburgh International Festival in August 2016. His book Petit Livre des Migrations (Paris, Gallimard, 2015) is expected to be published in German in 2017. Kadivar has been invited as a writer to the Literaturtagen festival in Frankfurt in January 2017 and to the Leipzig Book Fair in March 2017.