Playwright, director, producer

Borna Barzin is a Brooklyn-based playwright and director whose work moves between downtown performance and major New York institutions. Borna was named the inaugural Theater Resident of the Queer Nightlife Community Center, where his play The Perverse was presented in the fall of 2026. He was a 2026 Berkeley Rep Ground Floor Resident Artist, 2025 MacDowell Fellow, 2025 Mercury Store Resident Artist, 2024 Van Lier Fellow in Theater with the Asian American Arts Alliance, 2022-2021 Colt Coeur Resident Artist, and 2021-2020 member of the Roundabout Theater Company Directors Group. Borna has presented and developed work at Lincoln Center, New York Theatre Workshop, Sibiu International Theatre Festival, and Atlantic Theater Company, among others. 

Through staging and writing performance texts, Borna’s work follows its own sense of logic, embracing the limitlessness of theater. Against dreamlike, larger-than-life backdrops, Borna explores the pluralities of immigrant and queer experiences because their voices live closest to the volcano’s mouth — their passion and depth is the force that fuels his imaginative space. His work melds the familiar with the spectacular, realism with the otherworldly, and classicism with modernity. It speaks to a mystical power that cuts deep to the core and demands emotional response from its audience. Eschewing didactic naturalism for madcap surrealist montages, Borna’s work escapes the shadows of hegemony by allowing these communities to be their  messiest, most complicated, and most human. This commitment to culturally specific storytelling expands who theater is for, reaching beyond majoritarian aesthetics and inviting nontraditional audiences.

Borna is represented by Luke Virkstis at William Morris Endeavor (WME): LVirkstis@wmeagency.com 

direct contact: bornabbarzin@gmail.com