In the 1970s, Fereydoun Farrokhzad was a significant cultural icon, a sex symbol, and a chart-topping pop singer whose music and television programs were heard and viewed by millions of Iranians. A decade later, living in political exile in Germany, he still performed to sold-out audiences in Europe. That changed on August 7, 1992, when he was found brutally murdered in his apartment in Bonn. Neighbors said his dogs had been barking for two nights.

The murder, still unsolved, serves as the starting point for this new work by British-Iranian theater maker Javaad Alipoor, whose The Believers Are But Brothers was featured in the 2020 No Safety Net theater festival. Selected as one of The Guardian’s Top Theatre Shows of 2022, Things Hidden “gleefully mashes up genres, smashing together the quiet authority of the murder mystery podcast, the intimacy of autobiographical storytelling, and the visual spectacle of multimedia performance — while simultaneously deconstructing each of these forms.” (The Guardian)