Some shows come with an elevator pitch. This one comes with a warning label from Rumi. FORIEGNER, co-created by the Koan Brothers (Sohrab Haghverdi, Benjamin Rosenthal, and Mason Rosenthal), plays Strange Birds on Friday, October 9 at 7:30 PM, and twice on Saturday, October 10 at 4:00 PM and 8:30 PM.
Fresh off a spot on The Guardian’s list of must-see shows at the 2026 Edinburgh Fringe, this is an anti-comedy clown piece built around Sohrab’s own experience as an Iranian asylum seeker, filtered through Andy Kaufman-style stunts and a Sufi poet’s call to “kill the self.” Mason Rosenthal, one of the show’s producers, answered these on the team’s behalf.
In your own words, what is your show about?
FORIEGNER (the misspelling is intentional) is Sohrab Haghverdi’s paradoxical, autobiographical, anti-identity, anti-comedy clown show inspired by Andy Kaufman’s hijinks and Sufi mystic Rumi’s call to kill your self (بمیرید).
What sparked this piece?
Sohrab was born and raised in Iran, has had “pending” asylum status in America since 2013, and feels the push and pull to perform his identity in different ways for different audiences and institutions. In FORIEGNER, Sohrab simultaneously explains and refuses to explain himself. In some ways, the show is a skewering of the suitcase play — that style of solo performance where the costumes, props, and scenic elements are contained inside one or more suitcases that are literally unpacked in an attempt to metaphorically unpack the immigrant protagonist’s life story.
What’s been the hardest or most surprising part of making this?
The great Persian mystic poet Rumi, in Ghazal (No. 636), challenges us to bemirid. Do you know what that means? In Farsi it means: “let the self die.” Rumi says you should take every opportunity to kill the self.
At the end of each and every performance of FORIEGNER, Sohrab will bemirid in front of a live audience, which is always difficult and surprising.
Anything else you want people to know before they walk in?
In Farsi, we call spoiled boys like Sohrab doodool tala, which literally means “golden peepee.”
Catch FORIEGNER at Strange Birds on Friday, October 9 at 7:30 PM, or Saturday, October 10 at 4:00 PM or 8:30 PM, as part of the 2026 Scranton Fringe Festival. Buy tickets here. Thanks to Mason and the Koan Brothers team for sharing these insights into their show with us.
