Sama as a Researcher and Playwright
My evolution as a writer and playwright is a natural extension of my broader artistic and research practice. Beginning with my master’s studies in Theatre in Social Context in Germany, I began to view writing not merely as a literary endeavor but as a research-based and autoethnographic tool—a way to investigate lived experience through artistic practice.
I explicitly identify myself as an art-based researcher, and the main methodological framework of my PhD was a/r/tography, which allowed me to embody my roles as an artist, researcher, and teacher (or pedagogue) simultaneously. Within this framework, writing functions as both a reflective and performative act: a space where artistic creation, critical inquiry, and pedagogical thinking intersect.
Writing, for me, bridges personal history and collective narratives. Whether through playwriting, autobiographical texts, or research-based writing, it allows me to articulate experiences of memory, migration, identity, and self-formation, and to transform them into narratives that can be embodied and shared on stage.
In this sense, my identity as a writer is inseparable from my identity as a theatre artist. Writing is not a separate role, but an integral part of my artistic process—one through which silences become language, experience becomes form, and personal stories open toward collective meaning.
Self-Formation Processes in the Context of Autobiographical Theatre
PhD Dissertation | transcript Verlag (Germany), forthcoming April 2026
This PhD dissertation examines autobiographical theatre as a space of self-formation, focusing on how crises, irritations, and moments of disruption within artistic practice generate transformative learning processes. Grounded in art-based research and developed through the methodology of a/r/tography, the study integrates my roles as artist, researcher, and pedagogue.
The research is based on my autobiographical-documentary theatre project Days on the Way, created and performed in Iran between 2020 and 2022. Through analytic autoethnography and close analysis of rehearsal, performance, and reflection processes, the dissertation explores how embodied storytelling, narrative identity, and performative practice contribute to individual and collective self-formation within specific social and political contexts.
Documentary Theatre: Research and Educational Perspectives
Master’s Thesis | University of Applied Sciences and Arts Ottersberg, 2016
This master’s thesis investigates documentary theatre as a practice situated between artistic research, education, and social engagement. Focusing on the dual structure of documentary theatre—research phase and staging phase—the study analyzes how methods drawn from qualitative social research can be translated into theatrical creation and pedagogical practice.
The thesis combines theoretical analysis with practice-based research through the documentary theatre project People I Don’t See, developed in Tehran. Using interviews, field notes, and performative documentation, the work explores how documentary theatre creates spaces for reflection, knowledge production, and learning, positioning theatre as both an artistic and educational form grounded in lived social realities.
http://www.hks-docs.de/dl.php?datei=docs/2016/MA_Mousavimofahkar_Sama_2016.pdf
Pieces of Me 2023
Pieces of Me is an autobiographical play that dives into the heart of a woman’s identity, exploring the intricate layers of womanhood through the protagonist’s evolving relationships with her family. At its core, the play reveals how moments of breaking—times when she is shattered by personal and political upheavals—shape and reshape her sense of self. Through the lens of her childhood with her mother, her adolescence with her father, and her adulthood with her sister after immigration, the work portrays not only the fragments of a life, but the resilience that grows out of those fractures. Ultimately, Pieces of Me is a story of how a woman’s identity is continuously broken and rebuilt, showing how each moment of vulnerability becomes part of a larger journey toward wholeness.
The play will be self-produced by the artist in 2026.
Kissing in the Mother 2024
Kissing in the Mother Tongue unfolds over one night in a hotel room, where a seemingly simple affair becomes a profound confrontation with identity, othering, and belonging. At the heart of the story is the experience of a female Iranian actor grappling with a language barrier and the sense of being othered in a new land. Her encounter with an Afghan actor deepens the narrative, transforming it into a layered dialogue about race, immigration, and the complexities of identity. While on the surface it may appear to be an affair in a hotel room, beneath it delves into the profound themes of how two people from different backgrounds confront and navigate their shared yet distinct experiences of displacement. In the end, kissing in the Mother Tongue is a raw and intimate exploration of how cultural and linguistic borders shape the most personal of human connections.
Violet Hill 2025
Violet Hill is a deeply personal drama drawn from my own experience of abuse at a young age. In this play, a young woman returns like something long buried—rising from underground to confront the man who once abused his power over her, and his wife, who must now decide where she stands. The story raises a crucial question: when the legal system has no definition for her abuse and offers no form of justice, what paths remain for a survivor? She finds another way—one that forces people to see, acknowledge, and judge what power abuse truly is. Violet Hill is about reclaiming a hidden narrative and demanding that the abuser confront the truth, acknowledge the harm, and face the pain he tried to bury.