About Mehda
Photo: Elin Osjord
Once upon a time…
Mehda Zolfaqari is an award-winning Iranian-Norwegian storytelling artist based in Oslo, Norway. Mehda transfers old traditional stories into cotemporary performing pieces. She mirrors religious and mystical stories against personal experiences and current issues. Mehda combines art of storytelling with music, dance, and poetry. She performs in English, Persian and Norwegian and has been performing in- and outside of Scandinavia.
Mehda was born in 1982 in Tehran. At the age of nine she moved to Norway with her family. She has studied film- and journalism in Western Australia. In addition, she has studied Persian at the University of Oslo, Oral storytelling at Oslo University College and Interpretation (Norwegian, Persian and Dari) at Oslo Metropolitan University. Mehda has worked as journalist for the Norwegian Broadcasting Corp. (NRK), as actor at Kilden Theatre and at Deichman Bjørvika, Norway’s largest library.
Mehda is member of the Norwegian House of Storytelling, the oldest existing oral storytelling group in Norway. She works mostly with multi-lingual storytelling, stories from the Quran and Sufi tradition, Indo-Iranian stories and Persian literature. Mehda has been translating stories found in classical Persian literature into Norwegian and English, adapting them to our current time and performing them on stage in Norway and abroad.
From the beginning, Mehda has engaged storytelling art with intercultural- and interreligious dialogue and social activism. As maybe the only professional Quranic storytellers in Scandinavia, Mehda has worked on how to view stories from Islamic tradition from a humanistic and feministic point of view. She has applied stories from the Quran in interreligious dialogue. Together with Biblical storytellers, she has produced several interreligious storytelling performances based on common figures in The Bible and the Quran. Among the performances to mention are “Abraham in the Bible and Quran” and “Mary(am) – Stories About Mother of Jesus in The Bible and the Quran. In 2002, Mehda was the first woman with minority background who was warded The Bridge Builder Prize. The prize is given by the Norwegain Church Acadamy to persons or organizations that in a special way have contributed to increased understanding, communication and dialogue between different groups in culture and society.
“Mehda is a star storyteller. She cares deeply about the storytellers art and uses her unique cultural and personal skills to create performances with insight, style and depth. She is an important voice in storytelling in Norway today.”
“Mehdas communication of her faith and tradition has always touched me. Her ability to be in touch with her own experiences, and to interpret them in light of Holy Scriptures, opens up a place for those who are lucky to be listening to her. It takes a lot of courage to work the way Mehda does, and I feel privileged to have had the chance to work closely with her.”