Sara Amini Brings SARIA CALLAS to Edinburgh Fringe

Seemia Theatre will return with Saria Callas, a sexy, camp, pop-filled multimedia production that confronts the taboo of women's voices and explores the shifting terrain of gender, family, and self-expression.

Written, performed, and co-directed by Sara Amini, an Iranian artist and classically trained singer, the work intertwines fact and fiction, drawing on Amini's own lived experiences. Growing up in Tehran, where women have been banned from singing in public since the 1979 revolution, Sara dreamt of becoming a singer despite the risks. Now in London, as she raises a child who has just begun to question their gender identity, she must navigate a new kind of social pressure and unspoken fears as a parent. What does it mean to raise your voice when history has taught you to be silent? And how can someone who has fought for their own rights, then stand in the way of someone else's freedom?

As we join Sara, she's already a bottle of red in, reminiscing about her experiences of childhood to womanhood. We revisit Tehran, the school-bus parties, the wannabe prayer-caller and the secret w**ks at the all-girls' school.

Now Sara stands at a crossroads with her child. How does a woman who has experienced firsthand repression of her body and voice react as her child struggles with their own identity? Saria Callas highlights an often-unheard perspective of the supportive parent, intertwined with her own personal challenges.

As the audience joins Sara in this intimate moment, we witness a mother just at the very start of beginning to process her child's identity - a journey that is ongoing, imperfect, and rooted in love. In Farsi, the words 'he' and 'she' do not exist - there is only a gender-neutral pronoun, reflecting the fluidity of identity that the play seeks to explore.

Seemia Theatre stands firmly against misogyny, transphobia, and hate crimes. They believe that if feminism is not intersectional, the very barriers they seek to break remain intact. They believe that trans lives matter and that trans women are women. Non-binary people and trans folks have and always will exist. Their work aims to break down these barriers and foster understanding, reflecting the shared struggles of those whose voices have too often been silenced.

Saria Callas draws on personal stories, historical context, and collective memory, moving from the secret defiance of girlhood in Iran to the pressures of motherhood in the UK and the harsh realities of restricted bodily autonomy in Poland. Weaving video, lip-sync, humour, and vulnerability, the play becomes both a love letter to music and a reckoning with what's passed between mother and child.

Developed in collaboration with fellow Iranian and International Artists, Saria Callas offers a rare platform for voices often excluded from mainstream narratives, inviting audiences to consider what it means to resist - through art, through parenting, and through simply being yourself.

Sara is an Iranian artist. She studied BA Theatre Directing (Tehran University) and MA Performance Making (Goldsmiths). She also trained as a classical singer, opening for Dammahi, EFG London Jazz Festival 2023. She is currently recording her new LP.

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