The finale of City Theatre’s 2023-24 season imagines an encounter between famed pop artist Andy Warhol and a young Iranian radical during an improbable-but-true trip, when the Pittsburgh native traveled to Iran to take Polaroid pictures of the Shah’s wife.
Andy Warhol in Iran, running April 20-May 12, 2024, will star Jeffrey Emerson as Warhol and LA-based actor/songwriter Arian Rad as Farhad, with both making their City debuts.
Emerson’s extensive stage and screen credits include an appearance as the pop artist in episode one of the Ryan Murphy series Feud: Capote vs. The Swans (FX and Hulu), and, according to his bio, “a sassy stint as the villain Glenn on As The World Turns (ABC).
The two-hander by award-winning playwright Brent Askari will be directed by Marc Masterson, taking his final bow as City’s co-artistic director, after returning to the South Side in 2018 and later, sharing his position with Monteze Freeland and Clare Drobot.
Playwright Asarki said of his play, “As a Persian-American, when I learned that Andy Warhol had traveled to Iran in 1976, I knew that I wanted to write about his visit. I’ve been fascinated by Warhol for a long time, and the idea of him being in the Middle East — even if briefly — wouldn’leave my consciousness. I was especially intrigued that his trip had occurred just years before the Iranian Revolution — an event that I find myself returning to again and again as a dramatist.”
“Andy Warhol in Iran offers a wonderful opportunity to bring to life a three-dimensional portrait of Pittsburgh’s iconic artist in a fictional setting,” said Masterson. “Brent Askari’s play is insightful, dramatic, and surprisingly contemporary. This collision of art, politics and idealism finds both humanity and humor in the story that unfolds.”
Andy Warhol In Iran received its world premiere at Barrington Stage (Pittsfield, Massachusetts) in 2022, and enjoyed a critically-acclaimed run at North Light Theatre, outside of Chicago.
In 2012, Anthony Rapp came to City Theatre to star as another version of a fictional Andy Warhol, in the musical POP!, that gave an alternate account of the 1968 shooting of the artist.
TICKETS AND DETAILS
Andy Warhol in Iran will be on City Theatre’s Main Stage, 1300 Bingham Street, South Side, April 20 – May 12, 2024 (opening night is April 26). For tickets and information on special events, visit https://citytheatrecompany.org/play/andy-warhol-in-iran/ or call 412-431-CITY (2489).
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