A Review on My Play: My Name is Inanna

This review was published in Affect:acuity

Award-Winning Iranian Authors Read in Noho

She was arrested, pushed to the ground, humiliated and taken into custody for attending an anti-war rally? Did she do anything wrong? Nothing. Was she given a phone call? No.

Sitting in silence, Goushegir’s audience listened intently as she read from her one-act play, “My Name is Inanna,” a story not uncommon to middle-eastern people living in the United States. This is one of many stories, Iranian exile, playwright, Ezzat Goushegir was born to tell.



Captive, her audience sits on stools, at the bar, even cross-legged on the floor of the KGB Bar in Noho last night, silently watching Goushegir reveal how a courageous Iranian woman’s sense of self is challenged by American social standards and rules, in a prison and in a beauty store. The mask that her character Inanna wears in the beauty store and in the questioning room is the same, doing what she is told and trying not to cause trouble. These scenes bring to mind the questions: how has Inanna’s life changed in America? Does she truly have more freedom here? The irony of a woman exiled from post-revolutionary Iran only to be arrested at an anti-war demonstration is felt heavily in a room full of 1960’s activists, intellectuals and fellow Iranian exiles. Goushegir goes on to account for the fears that might infect someone’s mind as the clock ticks by and she waits and waits for the police officer to return.




When asked during the question and answer session, Goushegir admitted that the play was based on...Read More

Photos: Joel Simpson