Mohammad B. Ghaffari
Historian of Iranian theatre and Ta'zieh, and theater director
Mohammad B. Ghaffari (born September 9, 1944) is an American actor, director and theater researcher. He received his theater training at the School for Dramatic Arts In Tehran, Iran, and was active as a professional actor on the Iranian National Stage. His work has been seen at international theater festivals throughout Europe, the Middle East, and North America, and he has appeared in numerous feature films. He is known as a premier expert on the Iranian theatre tradition, ta'ziyeh, which he has produced and directed numerous times in major international performance venues and festivals to great critical acclaim.
Early career and Shiraz Arts Festival
Mohammad B. Ghaffari was engaged as an actor in Iran from his college days. In 1971 he joined internationally celebrated theater director Peter Brook and his International Centre for Theatre Research as an actor to perform as the Magician in Brook's historic production of Orghast in 1971, the first play produced by the Centre at the Iranian Shiraz Arts Festival. From 1974 to 1978 he became formally associated with the Festival of Arts in Shiraz at the request of Festival Director Farrokh Ghaffari, where he conducted research on, and produced for public performance, a wide range of traditional theater forms; these included the epic drama, ta'ziyeh and the improvisatory comic theater form ru-hozi (see Persian theatre). He also produced these traditional theater forms for the Festival of Popular Culture in Isfahan, Iran.
United States career
Ghaffari moved to the United States to pursue graduate studies at Michigan State University in 1978. He later moved to New York City where he continued to work as a professional actor, most prominently at Ellen Stewart's La Mama Experimental Theatre Club.
The public source identifies “Mohammad B. Ghaffari” as historian of Iranian theatre and Ta'zieh, and theater director. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Mohammad, Ghaffari and Historian.
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Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 31, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q110728356. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1944, 1971, 1974 and 1978.
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This entry incorporates text from “Mohammad B. Ghaffari” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.