Torange Yeghiazarian
Founding Artistic Director
Golden Thread Productions

Torange Yeghiazarian writes, directs and acts for the theatre. She is the Founding Artistic Director of Golden Thread Productions, where she has devoted her professional life to exploring Middle Eastern cultures and identities through theatre arts. In this capacity, Torange launched, ReOrient, an annual festival of short plays showcasing alternative perspectives of the Middle East. Torange’s latest play, 444 DAYS is receiving a staged reading at Golden Thread in 2011. Her play CALL ME MEHDI is included in “Salaam.Peace: An Anthology of Middle Eastern-American Drama” published by TCG in 2009. Other plays include WAVES, DAWN AT MIDNIGHT, BEHIND GLASS WINDOWS, ABAGA, and PUBLICLY RESTING. Torange’s articles on contemporary theatre in Iran have been published in American Theatre Magazine and Theatre Bay Area Magazine. In 2008, Torange adapted the poetry of Simin Behbehani to the stage in I SELL SOULS. In 2007, she collaborated with Iranian, Israeli and American artists on creating BENEDICTUS. Other directing credits include A GIRL’S WAR by Joyce Van Dyke, NINE ARMENIANS by Leslie Ayvasian, TAMAM by Betty Shamieh, THREE STOPS AND SCENIC ROUTES by Yussef el Guindi. As a teaching artist, Torange has taught playwriting to at-risk youth and led acting and play development workshops for youth and adults at Golden Thread. Born in Iran and of Armenian heritage, Torange holds a Master’s degree in Theatre Arts from San Francisco State University. Among Torange’s theatre writings are ABAGA (THE FUTURE), a lyrical tale of two generations of forbidden love between an Armenian man and a Turkish woman in Istanbul of 1915, and their daughter and a Jewish immigrant in Jerusalem of 1935, DAWN AT MIDNIGHT, centered on an unexpected turning point in the life of Sahar, a successful Iranian TV personality in Los Angeles, WAVES, depicting the reunion of two political activists after a 17-year separation, PUBLICLY RESTING, a farcical comedy played out inside the Airport Men’s Restroom, BEHIND GLASS WINDOWS, adapted from a story by Sadeq Hedayat, OPERATION NO PENETRATION, LYSISTRATA 97! a contemporary adaptation of the classic Greek comedy where Palestinian and Israeli women unite to force their men to sign a peace treaty, and the melodrama TORCH! created collaboratively in a workshop with the San Francisco Mime Troupe. Torange performed in DARVAG’s production of THE EIGHTH VOYAGE OF SINDBAD by Bahram Beyzaii; Farhad Ayish’s THE LAST SUPPER; Franca Rame and Dario Fo’s A WOMAN ALONE as well as in the independent films “The Last Illusion” and “Surviving Paradise” by Kamshad Kooshan.