Winter season 2009

self (the remix)

written and performed by robert farid karimi
with live soundscapes spun by DJ D Double.
directed by Ellen Sebastian Chang

Storyteller/performance artist, def poetry jam performer, national poetry slam champion robert farid karimi — supported by an amazing soundscape spun live by Chicago DJ and Violator All-Star DJ D Double — mixes together stories, movement, and music to tell the tale of a first generation child of Iranian and Guatemalan immigrants learning how to survive the cultural imperialism of the United States on his quest to find wholeness in the fractured atmosphere of the 70s and 80s.

With the Iranian Hostage Crisis, the birth of 80s conservatism, and bay area suburban teenage angst as his backdrop, karimi tells a remixed autobiographical tale of a boy struggling to learn about manhood, nationhood, and neighborhood with the voices and music of his environment helping him along. The sound design is a masterful soundscape of modern music, 80s hip hop, 70s disco, house music, and punk rock. From disco-filled Mexican restaurants to mixed culture moshpits, karimi and DJ D Double traverse time through sound.

Audiences and critics agree in every town it’s played, as Chicago Reader Critic Nick Green said, “The bottom line is [karimi] has discovered a powerful, distinctive voice; all he needs now is an audience.”
“The only drawback to “self (the remix)” is that it only played two nights....[karimi] tells his stories with great wit and snap, leaving the audience wanting more...”
—Deborah Martin, San Antonio EXPRESS-NEWS

“[Karimi’s] talents as monologuist and as a pliable-faced, rubber-legged comedian with good pacing and boyish appeal take us easily through a story whose details are not always universal but often become so in his telling.”
—Anchorage Daily News

Each show is specially remixed for a community that it is presented in, and no show has been mixed exactly the same twice.