In EARWORM, playwright Mohammad Yaghoubi spotlights the concerns of Toronto's Iranian community
Nowadays Theatre production tells the story of a woman whose values are confronted when her son falls in love
EARWORM. Photo by Dahlia Katz
Nowadays Theatre presents EARWORM in association with Blackout Art Society at Presentation House Theatre from October 10 to 13
ON SEPTEMBER 16, 2022 in Iran, a 22-year-old woman named Mahsa Amini died after being in police custody for allegedly violating local law by wearing her hijab improperly. Though eyewitnesses reported she was severely beaten, and that she lost her life as a result of police brutality, the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran denied those claims, stating instead that she suffered a heart attack and subsequently fell into a coma.
People across the world expressed outrage at the lack of transparency and respect for women’s rights in the situation, launching the global Women, Life, Freedom movement.
This series of events informed playwright Mohammad Yaghoubi’s latest production, EARWORM, making its Vancouver premiere this month. Presented by Nowadays Theatre, in association with Blackout Art Society and Presentation House Theatre, the show follows a woman named Homa who immigrated to Toronto to evade persecution from the Islamic regime in Iran and now hosts a podcast about her experiences. But when Homa’s son pursues a romantic relationship with a conservative Muslim woman who’s tied to the regime, Homa must carefully weigh how her values and decisions could impact her family’s future.
Yaghoubi finished his first draft of EARWORM in 2021, the year before Amini’s death.
“I’ve written many plays, and it was one of the saddest endings I ever wrote,” he tells Stir by phone from his home in Toronto. When the Women, Life, Freedom protests began gaining momentum globally, he decided that a more uplifting conclusion might be more fitting. We won’t give too much away, but audiences will get to see Yaghoubi’s original ending, followed by his amended conclusion.
“When I started this play, I was hopeless,” Yaghoubi says. “But after this nationwide uprising, I thought I should write a new ending that reflects the power of people. I thought it wasn’t good to have a play that fuelled the illusion of the Islamic Republic’s power.”
Yaghoubi was born and raised in Iran, and immigrated to Canada in 2015. He founded Toronto-based nonprofit Nowadays Theatre in 2016 with his wife, Aida Keykhaii—a new version of a theatre group they had run in Iran called Inrooz-ha (Farsi for “Nowadays”). But due to local Iranian laws, there was a catch.
“In Iran, everything is complicated,” Yaghoubi says. “We didn’t have a registered company because of censorship, and unfortunately nobody can have this basic opportunity to have a registered company. It’s totally different in Canada—we registered the company in maybe one or two months. But in Iran, we had over one decade of theatre work, and we couldn’t have such a thing.”
Mohammad Yaghoubi.
Since getting Nowadays Theatre off the ground in Canada, Yaghoubi has written several plays in both Farsi and English, including A Moment of Silence, which shows audiences a timeline of Iranian history through the lens of a woman who falls in and out of years-long slumbers.
EARWORM continues shedding light on the past, present, and future of Iran, echoing the sentiment of unease felt by Toronto’s Iranian community as of late. Keykhaii plays the lead role of Homa, who experienced prison time in Iran before seeking refuge in Canada, and addresses all these themes through her podcast.
“The story begins when she encounters individuals linked to the Islamic Republic right here in Canada,” Yaghoubi says. “Through the play, I wanted to highlight the irony of how oppressed people who have fled to Canada are forced to coexist with their oppressors. One of the key questions Homa spotlights in her podcast is this: Why has Canada become an open gate for individuals connected to the Islamic Republic of Iran?”
In recent years, the Government of Canada has taken a hard stance against the Islamic Republic of Iran; it was officially declared “a regime that engages in terrorism and systematic or gross human rights violations” in November 2022. As early as 2012, Canada designated Iran as a state supporter of terrorism. In a news release last month, Canada Border Services Agency and Public Safety Canada declared that anyone who has held a senior role in the Iranian government since June 23, 2003—the day Iranian Canadian photojournalist Zahra Kazemi was wrongly detained, tortured, and killed while in the custody of the Iranian regime—is no longer allowed residency or visitation rights here.
While high-ranking Islamic Republic of Iran officials may no longer be admissible to Canada, the entity’s supporters still are, which may pose concerns for people who fled Iran due to political persecution.
To establish that his play is not coming from a place of Islamophobia, Yaghoubi decided to name the antagonist in EARWORM after himself—Mohammad.
“I didn’t choose my name when I was born, you know?” Yaghoubi says. “It’s just a tricky way, we can even say a humorous way, of spotlighting an issue about Islam. I know there are people concerned that we don’t say something which can be read as Islamophobia…. But it is important that we should speak about this. As a person who lived in an Islamic country, I think I’m legitimate enough to write and talk about this.”
Yaghoubi started writing EARWORM in English, but the playwright soon realized that he needed to switch to writing some scenes in his mother tongue of Farsi in order to convey them properly. Eventually, this linguistic back-and-forth led to there being two similar versions of the play: one in English, and one in Farsi.
The play’s Farsi title, تیمور لنگ, means “Timur the Lame”, who was a Turco-Mongol conqueror. It’s a nod to the play’s historical foundations, and emphasizes that the production may come across differently depending on which language you view it in. Though it deals with a lot of serious subject matter, EARWORM is also laced with humorous moments to balance it all out for audiences.
“The same cast performs in both languages, and I think this is an interesting part of our play,” Yaghoubi says. “I encourage English-speaking audiences to watch first in English, and then come see in Farsi as well, because Farsi is the mother tongue of all the actors. They are first generation, and they think and they dream—like me—in Farsi, not in English. But they tried their best, and I thank them for doing this in English as well. My suggestion is, after English, they’re welcome to see the show again in Farsi, just to hear another voice, another music, and authenticity from the actors.” 
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