NASSIM Comes to HOME Manchester

Iranian playwright Nassim Soleimanpour is a playwright with a difference. His work requires no rehearsals and no preparation - just a sealed envelope and a different actor each night on hand to read a script for the very first time.

For each of the three performances at HOME, a different Manchester cultural figure will take the stage and read the contents of the sealed envelope in an audacious theatrical experiment, as follows:

• Tue 18 June - 21-year-old artist and writer Isaiah Hull is a leading member of Manchester's leading poetry and spoken-word collective Young Identity. His first collection of poetry, Nosebleeds, is published by Wrecking Ball Press. He has opened for Kate Tempest, Saul Williams, the late Amiri Baraka, performed ahead of Skepta at BBC Radio 1's Big Weekend festival, and was also in the Imagine Homeland symposium at the 2017 Manchester International Festival marking the 70th anniversary of the partition of India

• Wed 19 June - Manchester-based actor Julie Hesmondhalgh is best known for playing Hayley Cropper in Coronation Street for 16 years from 1998, for which she won the Best Serial Drama Performance in the National Television Awards, and Best Actress in the British Soap Awards, both in 2014. She is also a co-founder of leading Manchester theatre company Take Back Theatre, and has performed extensively at the Royal Exchange Theatre

• Thu 20 June - Manchester-based poet, writer and author Jackie Kay is currently the Scottish Makar, the Scotland equivalent of the Poet Laureate. Her award-winning memoir, Red Dust Road, is being brought to HOME in September after a run at this year's Edinburgh Festival. She is Chancellor at Salford University, and is also a patron of HOME

Touchingly autobiographical yet powerfully universal, Nassim, first commissioned by the Bush Theatre in London, directed by Omar Elerian, and subsequently an Edinburgh Festival 2017 Fringe First winner, is a striking theatrical demonstration of how language can both divide and unite us.

Nassim follows Soleimanpour's globally acclaimed White Rabbit Red Rabbit, which has been translated into over 25 different languages and performed over 1,000 times by names including Stephen Fry, Ken Loach and Whoopi Goldberg.

Nassim Soleimanpour's work is NOT overtly political, and should not be portrayed as such. It operates on a deeper, metaphoric level, and very expressly avoids overt political comment. All media and press are asked to keep in mind that the playwright's home is Iran, as are his friends and family. We therefore ask the media to be judicious in their reportage.

TICKETS: £16, £18 (concessions £5)

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