Bio
Asal Takesh is a theater practitioner, researcher, and emerging creative technologist born in Iran, raised in San Francisco, and based in New York City. She is a third-year drama student at NYU Tisch School of the Arts, having trained within Playwrights Horizons Theater School’s B.F.A. conservatory program, currently training in the founding class of the Innovation Studio led by Rubén Polendo, and minoring in the Business of Entertainment, Media, and Technology. Takesh is in pursuit of an Honors degree.
Devotion to an understanding of how we relate to ourselves and others within the contemporary moment propels Asal’s art-making towards themes of grief, injury, Self, memory, time, love, and the state of liminality they take possession of within a research-based model. Her artistic practice includes direction, performance, writing, and music-making through corporeal, psychological, and spiritual experiences in the form of performance-based works. Poetry drives the root of her practice: image-making as ritual.
Asal values her cultural contexts and identity deeply.
in process
The Green Room 42: Bohemian Nights
Featuring Kamora Joseph, William Altman, Bella Ray, Jack Bausch, Rebecca Steiner, Jillian Millette, Mikaila Pizarro, Asal Takesh, Jad Jacob, & Meteoro & the UFO’s.
Dir. @kamora_.j & Music Dir. @tenorshed
April 13th, 2025
50th anniversary tisch theater studies Symposium:
Research Presentation: theatre of nonhuman & technology
Virtual Attendance (Zoom): RSVP @ oiz203@nyu.edu
Prosthetic Memory and Digital Remains: this is where i knew you best
By Asal Takesh
NYU Tisch School of the Arts
721 Broadway, New York, NY 10003 (Dean’s Conference Room, 12th Floor)
March 15th, 2025
12:30pm - 2:10pm
this is where i knew you best
Playwrights Horizons Theater School
Directed by Asal Takesh
November 14th-16th
here at the gate / here your form lies and [error] pray for it / i don't know what you are /
here at the gate / here your form lies and [error] pray for it / i don't know what you are /
this is where i knew you best is a research-based performance piece engaging with manifestations of trauma as they relate to memory, identity, and the physical body.
the Self malfunctions in a state of dissociation at the intersection of performance and technology, where the question of autonomy is governed by faith in an efficient quality of life.
a force within a House of God— to be reckoned with or reckoned for.
the team
Director: Asal Takesh
Associate Director: Madison Broadway
Assistant Director: Skylar Causey
Projection Designer: Zury Lowell
Lighting Designer: Jaccoa Stills
Set/Scenic Designer: Topaz Gao
Sound Designers: Gavin Brehm, George Estey, and Landon Hegedus
The Players:
Gabi DuPont (The Little One)
Allie Poole (The Skeptic)
Colette Pitts (The Care-Taker)
Sophie Rossman (The Cruiser)
Creative Consultants:
Britney Lizbeth Quiroz
Corinne Renick
Created by Asal Takesh, Madison Broadway, Skylar Causey, Allie Poole, Gabi DuPont, Sophie Rossman, Jaccoa Stills, Zury Lowell, and Colette Pitts.
in Rehearsal
Generative Movement laboratories
text Work
News & Updates
Direction
this is where i knew you best
Playwrights Horizons Theater School; New York University
this is where i knew you best by Asal Takesh, Madison Broadway, Skylar Causey, Allie Poole, Gabi DuPont, Sophie Rossman, Jaccoa Stills, Zury Lowell, and Colette Pitts
Directed by Asal Takesh
The Players:
Gabi DuPont (The Little One)
Allie Poole (The Skeptic)
Colette Pitts (The Care-Taker)
Sophie Rossman (The Cruiser)
Photos by @orbitalboner
The Casbah
Broke People Play Festival; New York University
The Casbah by Asal Takesh
Directed by Asal Takesh
The Players:
Salah: Soli Partovi
Fadil: Safin Karim
Performance
The Flamboyán @ The Clemente Soto Vélez Cultural & Educational Center
The Seagull & The Raven & The Fox & The Peacock & The Old Dog
A devised adaptation of Anton Chekhov’s The Seagull.
Devised by Henry Alper, Blaise Ylianna Hewlett, Jason Hoover, Max Newman, Isabelle Ormsby, Soli Partovi, Sophie Rossman, Asal Takesh, Kayta Thomas, Luke Wisniewski, & Luke Wyngarden.
Facilitated By Sophie Rossman, Henry Alper, & Luke Wisniewski.
Winter 2025
Frigid New York @ UNDER St Marks Theater
Tom Blanc Fucking Dies from the Crow Carious Universe (Prometheus)
Dir. Topaz Gao
Fall 2024
Playwrights Horizons Theater School
Aunt Leaf by Barbara Wiechmann (Aunt Leaf)
Dir. Elizabeth Leach
Fall 2023
A.C.T. Strand Theater
World Premiere: The Code by The Kilbanes (Tatianna)
Dir. Jessica Holt
Summer 2022
January 2023
Track List:
1. living room
2. always knew
3. stalemate
4. different people
5. the outside
Featured Track:
