The ‘barbaric poets’ project began with a meeting and conversation between Chinese playwright Dora Yuemin Cheng and Iranian director Sara Amini during the ITI Academy Week at Theatre of the World 2023. They met with a feminist attitude, the search for collective resistance and began to look for poetic, theatrical forms for this together. Inspiration for this work came from the fictional article ‘A Letter from Prison in Tehran’. The article, written in Chinese, documented the experiences of young demonstrators in a Chinese prison, using real people, places and events from the Jin Jiyan Azadi women's movement in Iran.
During the lecture performance, they together with Jaber Ramezan reviewed the history of female resistance in China and Iran. Dora presented her documentation and personal observations of Iranian activists during her stay in Tehran in April 2024. The artists' aim was to initiate a collective understanding and experience of resistance through our individual memories. This endeavour was not limited to a specific geographical location or historical event, but aimed at the essence of resistance. Texts and materials developed during their research week were presented and then discussed with the audience.
