The World Premiere of AJAX by Habib Yazdi and directed by Kareem Fahmy will come to Boise Contemporary Theatre next month. Performances run April 22-May 9, 2026.
A play about the 1953 American coup in Iran. A comedy. Until it isn’t.
It’s a hot summer in August 1953, when a clean-cut American arrives at a peaceful villa in North Tehran. Kambiz, the villa’s gardener and pool boy, wonders if the new guest may be his ticket to a better life. As their friendship deepens, Kambiz finds himself entangled in strange affairs involving the Shah of Iran and the country’s elected prime minister. How will it end? Only the pool knows…
Cast:
Amin El Gamal (Shah)
Ben Farha (Pool)
Shayan Hooshmand (Kambiz)
Andy Ingalls (Kermit)
Gordon Reinhart (Loy)
Production and Design Team:
Kareem Fahmy (Director)
Hayden Peterson (Assistant Director)
Elena Maddy (Stage Manager)
Tris Berg (Assistant Stage Manager)
Nicholas Jules Hewitt (Technical Director)
Alexander Woodward (Scenic Designer)
Chanté Thornton Hamann (Costume Designer)
Omar Madkour (Lighting Designer)
Caroline Eng (Sound Designer)
Lily Kennedy (Props Artisan)
Chris Pedersen (Master Carpenter)
Brayden Buckley (Sound Engineer/Sound Board Operator)
*Member of Actor’s Equity Association, the Union of Professional Actors and Stage Managers in the United States.
About the Playwright
Habib Yazdi is an Iranian-American playwright and filmmaker whose work blends comedy with history and cultural memory. He produced and directed the PBS series United States of Comedy and is a recipient of South Coast Repertory’s Elizabeth George Commission. AJAX, his play about the 1953 American coup in Iran, was developed at The New Group and Bay Street Theater and will premiere at Boise Contemporary Theater in spring 2026, followed by a production at Amphibian Stage. He is a current member of The Writers’ Room at Geffen Playhouse.
Habib’s films have screened internationally at festivals including St. Louis, Brisbane, Brooklyn, Vail, and Pan African, and institutions such as the Barbican Centre, the de Young Museum, and Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum.
Habib earned his M.F.A. from NYU Tisch School of the Arts, where he received the Oliver Stone Screenwriting Award and the Goldberg Play Prize. He is an alum of Sundance and ISF’s Building Bridges Fellowship, as well as the Warner Bros. Discovery Access Directors Program, Mentorship Matters Writing Lab, New York Stage and Film Workshop, and Gotham Week.
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