Bijan Sheibani is not afraid to take on a challenge. The British-Iranian has become a rapidly rising star in the British theater scene, with productions often praised for their directness and musicality. Indeed, as a young man Sheibani studied violin and piano and considered becoming a professional musician before developing an interest in theater. It was his experience directing Pinter’s The Lover in his last year at Oxford, however, which started him on the path that has led to his current status as one of Britain’s most respected young directors. (“Young” in the theater, as in movies and geology, has a slightly different definition. Sheibani is thirty-three.)
He has received three Olivier nominations (the UK’s version of the Tony) and one win, for work astonishing in its range. Sheibani’s directorial gaze has fixed itself upon a startlingly diverse cosmos of authors, from Tirso de Molina to Becket and Pinter, from Lorca to contemporary international artists like Tadeusz Slobodzianek and Bola Adgaje (whose Gone Too Far! Sheibani helmed to an Olivier for Outstanding Achievement in Affiliate Theater in 2008). He has even directed opera (Anna Meredith’s Tarantula in Petrol Blue) and received some rare criticism of his work after taking on a sprawling environmental polemic called Greenland commissioned by Britain’s National Theater. But Sheibani is unfazed: “You’ve got to keep experimenting,” he says. But perhaps most interesting is his collaboration with black American playwright Tarell Alvin McCraney, whose The Brothers Size he directed to great acclaim five years ago, and whose Antony and Cleopatra set in Haiti he is scheduled to direct this year. After that–no sweat–Sheibani’s set to take on McCraney’s 90-minute adaptation of Hamlet. // Patrick Barrett