Irfan Shamji (Samad) and Scott Karim (Tom) in The Arrival. Image by Marc Brenner.
I’ve spent so much of my life wondering…passing people on the street… and now, yeah… you’re here
When Tom and Samad meet for the first time, they are stunned by the similarities they share. In spite of Tom’s adoption and all the years spent apart, the two brothers are joined by an undeniable biological bond.
But as they become closer and their lives entangle, they realise that finding each other comes at a price.
A taut family drama about obsession, betrayal and the human need to belong, The Arrival is a World Premiere written and directed by Olivier Award-winning director Bijan Sheibani (Barber Shop Chronicles, The Brothers Size).
Bijan Sheibani is a freelance theatre, opera and film director.
Most recent theatre credits include The Brothers Size (Young Vic), Dance Nation (Almeida), Barber Shop Chronicles (National Theatre) and Circle Mirror Transformation (Home Manchester). In 2018 Barber Shop Chronicles toured to full houses in Australia and New Zealand after two sell-out runs at the National Theatre in 2017. It toured the USA for four months in 2018 and is currently touring the UK. It will come to the Roundhouse in London for six weeks this summer.
Later this year Bijan will direct the UK tour of his National Theatre production of A Taste of Honey by Shelagh Delaney.
Recent opera credits include Nothing for Glyndebourne (Danish National Opera) which was nominated for a 2017 Southbank Sky Arts Award for Best New Opera, and Tell Me The Truth About Love (Streetwise Opera)
Bijan has directed two short films, Groove is in the Heart, and Samira’s Party, both of which were selected for the BFI London Film Festival and other international festivals.
In 2019 he will direct Morning Song for Film Four which he has also written. It is produced by Camilla Bray and Nathanael Baring.
He was an associate director of the National Theatre from 2010-2015 under Nicholas Hytner and Nick Starr, and artistic director of ATC from 2007-2010. He won the James Menzies-Kitchen Award for Young Directors in 2003 and held the John S Cohen Bursary at the National Theatre Studio from 2003-2004. He was nominated for an Olivier Award in 2010 for Best Director for his production of Our Class, and his production of Gone Too Far! by Bola Agbaje won an Olivier Award for Outstanding Achievement in an Affiliate Theatre in 2008. The Brothers Size won Best International Production at the Barcelona Critics Circle Awards 2008 and was nominated for an Olivier Award in the same year. Bijan’s production of Nothing for Glyndebourne was nominated for a 2017 Southbank Sky Arts Award for Best Opera.
Theatre credits include Julius Caesar, The Drunks ,The Grain Store (RSC), The Contingency Plan (Bush Theatre), Mary Stewart ( Hipp theatre, Sweden); Hedda Gabler ( Gate Theatre Dublin);Happy Now? (Cottesloe NT); Private Lifes and The Giant (Hampstead theatre); Endgame (Everyman Liverpool); Far From The Madding Crowd ( ETT tour); Lady From The Sea and She Stoops To Conquer (Birmingham Rep); The Elephant Man ( Lycium Sheffield & Tour); Kean (Apollo theatre, West End); Glass Eels ,Comfort Me With Apples ( Hampstead theatre);Jack and the Beanstalk (Barbican Theatre); Pure Gold ( Soho Theatre) Henry V ,Mirandolina and A Convseration (Royal Exchange); Terms of Enderment ( Tour);Restoration (Bristol Old Vic and Tour for Headlong); My Fair Lady (Cameron Mackintosh/National Theatre Tour production); The Caretaker ( Tricycle Theatre), Comedy of Errors, Bird Calls , Iphigenia (Crucible Theatre, Sheffield); The Doll?s House (West Yorkshire Playhouse); Sunshine on Leith (Dundee Rep & Tour):Heartbreak House (Watford Palace) A Model Girl(Greenwich theatre) The Solid Gold Cadillac (Garrick Theatre, West End); The Secret Rapture (Lyric Shaftesbury Avenue); Noises Off , All My Son?s , Dr. Faustus (Liverpool Playhouse); On The Piste ( Birmingham Rep); The Chairs ( Gate theatre); Follies ,Insignificance and Breaking the Code (Theatre Royal, Northampton) Tartuffe , The Gentleman From Olmedo, The Venetian Twins, Hobson?s Choice, Dancing at Lughnasa, Love in a Maze (Watermill Theatre); Fields of Gold , Villette (Stephen Joseph Theatre); Cinderella (Bristol Old Vic); Hysteria and Children Of A Lesser God (Salisbury Playhouse).
Opera credits include: Samson et Delilah, Lohengrin (Royal Opera House); The Trojan Trilogy and The Nose (Linbury ROH);The Gentle Giant (The Clore ROH); The Threepenny Opera (for the Opera Group); L’Opera Seria (Batignano Festival)
