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Guest Post: EDI is a commitment to learning and asking questions

Guest post written by Nazli Tabatabai-Khatambakhsh

Illustration by Heedayah Lockman

Since 2018 I have been working on crafting this term “Radical Diplomatic Empathy” and how it can be applied to Equitable Collaboration and Dramaturgy of Experience. A way of being, thinking and doing that enables, with care, transformation through attending to narratives.

This thinking, and the following questions, has been part of my work at Sanctuary Queer Arts:

• How do you prepare to be able to bring your whole self into co-creating an equitable encounter?
• What is the joy that you have for your practice of labour and work?
• In the ever-evolving ways we have to connect, how can we notice the pathways between bias to prejudice and call them out to call in with dignity and respect? Charting how through your life you have shaped your values and beliefs, how they have changed?
• What  seeking of rituals, routines and ways of nourishing yourself have you developed so you can bring all of yourself to your practice – noticing through this how much uncertainty you can thrive in?
• Creative conflict is a combustion that is generative. Human difficulty where the line between the public and personal has been crossed needs another kind of care – being able to have in place the repair mechanism that gives care and dignity and protection to each person involved as they each hold elements of the solution – how to resource going beyond agreeing to disagree?
• How do you restore, knowing what has become automatic and what is required for each encounter and how to resources this meaningfully and sustainably?
• What ways do you reflect and move this to focussed reflexivity where you continue to learn in multiple ways and find the ways to share this being, knowing and doing?

So far in my lifetime the most significant shift in intersectional feminism is “Woman. Life. Freedom.” A fire that has been smouldering in Iran since the revolution of 1979, indeed for a decade before then, threading through the Constitutional Revolution and coming back through to the uprisings following what has been described as the femicide of Mahsa Jina Amini in Tehran in September 2022.

The fight against Gender Apartheid in Iran led by women and their ally’s accomplices continues to redraft what the idea of Iran is – indeed, within its borders, throughout the diaspora, and transnationals. This socio-political shift intersects with local and geo-political freedom of expression and the dream of bold new futures.

On an eye-to-eye level, the brush of hand-to-hand – the inhale and exhale of it all is EDI; EDI as human-to-human accountability. EDI, for me in my labour and work, is through the lens of art and culture, so I have this quote:

“Rise up and uproot the roots of oppression.
give comfort to your bleeding heart.
for the sake of your freedom, strive
to change the law, rise up.”

The final quatrain from Forough Farrokhzad’s poem To My Sister.

In 2024, I was dramaturg on production for the play Expendable by Emteaz Hussian, directed by Esther Richardson, at the Royal Court – a theatre house with the most brilliant humans led by David Byrne. The experience was a renewal of my love for theatre and new narratives as an arena for alchemy between artists and audiences. Central to this was Emteaz’s writing and in particular the distinction between feminism and womanism through the intersection of working class lived experiences. The narrative set the tone for a collaborative process toward production – the meeting with audiences with diverse life experiences.

Earlier in 2024 in June my play “Medea on the Mic” was produced by A Play, Pie and a Pint programmed by the then lead of the organisation Jemima Levwick. It was directed by Philip Howard and assistant director Olivia Millar-Ross. The narrative was a reinterpretation after Euripides and the music and songs were crafted by an outstanding cast.

I offer these two examples drawn from a portfolio year working internationally, to highlight that when narratives are nurtured with intersectionality and with integrity, the collaborations that come forth are crafted through equity. This clarity of intention greets audiences with qualities of expression that dare to connect through courage to move forward by going beyond agreeing to disagree. It is about trust, so as to be able to summon the strength to ask what is keeping you from releasing you from resolution to transformation. The work of being intersectionally interconnected creates connections of fluid identities and transformation of making repairs. The continued commitment to learning to move beyond reflection to being reflexive. To continually be learning and asking yourself: how do you know what you know?

Nazli Tabatabai-Khatambakhsh is Associate Director at Sanctuary Queer Arts; Professor of Dramatic Writing at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama on the MA in Opera Making and Writing specializing in collaboration and equitable practices; and Associate Artist at The Oxford School of Drama teaching across all courses focusing on Dramaturgy and working with OSD on their strategy. Nazli also founded Creative Case North with Arts Council England and a consortium of organisations that includes the commissioning of artists and organisations to collaborate through the lens of culture on the interconnectedness intersections of Inclusion, Diversity, Access, Equity, and Equality. She is also a UK and International mentor, coach, facilitator, moderator, and trainer with specialism in leadership, change management, and transformation. An Arts Council England and International Society for the Performing Arts (ISPA) Fellow 2017-2019 and since 2021 an ISPA Governance Committee Member. Her multi-award-winning credits are in theatre, dance, opera, circus, literature, museums, art galleries, and opera. Nazli is the inaugural postgraduate researcher of the libretto as artistic practice-based research at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama.

Read the Equal Media and Culture Centre’s new report ‘Equality, Diversity and Inclusion: women in media, creative and cultural sectors in Scotland.‘