The Game we knew, but didn’t Play

‘The Game We Knew but Didn’t Play’ explores censorship as a power struggle that intervenes in artistic processes, relationships and everyday encounters.

The performance explores how censorship determines what can be said and shown, but also how it shapes institutions, communities and the ways in which artists negotiate, adapt, remain silent, take risks or continue their work within restrictive structures.

The work is based on Azadeh Ganjeh’s research into German theatre productions that were staged in state-controlled venues in the Islamic Republic of Iran following the 1979 revolution. Shaped by the perspectives of exiled artists who have experienced censorship, these case studies serve as a starting point for an exploration of censorship in various political, cultural and institutional contexts.

Developed by Rebel-IST-hah! members Foad Esfahani and Azadeh Ganjeh in collaboration with Lisa Lucassen, Jule Flierl and Philine Rinnert, the performance draws on documentary materials, historical case studies, personal archives, biographies and performative actions. Together, these materials broaden the exploration of how life, decisions and actions become entangled in systems of censorship.

Each performance opens up a space for questions. How does censorship intrude upon this space? How does it become an invisible component of aesthetic decisions, institutional agreements or artistic collaborations? And who benefits from the compromises and interconnections that arise as a result?

Rebel-IST-hah! is a performance and research collective founded in 2006 by Azadeh Ganjeh and Foad Esfahani in Tehran (Iran) and based in Berlin since 2022. Through performance art, artistic research and collaborative working processes, the collective engages with social and political issues and explores how people experience power through bodies, spaces, institutions and narratives.

Over the years, Rebel-IST-hah! has worked in both conventional and unconventional spaces and collaborated with interdisciplinary artists, performers, researchers and various communities. The spectrum of their work ranges from performance activism to immersive theatre, radio plays and lecture-performances, right through to stage productions. In doing so, they combine documentary and archival materials with embodied practices, memory and performative experiments. This gives rise to works that bear witness to activism, open up spaces for manifestation, invite participation in the performance and/or in social reality, and devise alternative forms of political coexistence.