My Therapist is A Volcano

We are attending a therapy session , of a dinosaur and her therapist , THE VOLCANO

Saman Mahdavi 

Location: Frascati 1

Dates:





duration of the performance: 50 min

We are attending a therapy session unlike any other—one that stretches across 83 million years. Afarin, a dinosaur from ancient Persia, sits with her therapist, the Volcano. But this isn’t a private session—it’s a shared experience. The audience becomes part of the healing, invited to dance, laugh, cry, and remember alongside Afarin. They don’t just watch—they speak, move, and breathe with the Volcano, who listens not only to Afarin but to everyone in the room.

What you are about to experience is a journey through impossible landscapes of time
gone—dreams of places we lived but never existed. These memories, faded in the flames of the Volcano, become a celebration where past and future merge. The Volcano holds the earth’s deepest wounds and guides us through emotions tied to a buried past and the legacy of black gold—Afarin’s mother, the oil beneath the surface. Together, dinosaur, Volcano, and audience create a space where memory is embodied, time dissolves, and healing becomes a collective act.
 

Biography

Saman Mahdavi is a versatile artist from Tehran. Her work moves between image (taswir), text, movement, and installation. She uses the body as a site of transformation, rupture, and return. Her work reflects cycles of creation and destruction.   

Saman is influenced by ancient wisdom and contemporary crisis. She explores political struggle, memory, and the earth. Symbols like black gold (oil), fossils, and the heat of buried memories appear often in her work. These elements show a deep and timeless connection to land.  

Her choreography is a living archive. It is shaped by friendship, shared history, and collective transformation. Movements become vessels for memory, emotion, and daydreams.  

She studied Theatre at the Art University of Tehran. She works across the SWANA region and Europe. 

credits

pictures by : Reinout Bos & Casper Koster 
composer : Amirhossein Sadeghzade 
writer:
Chasem Najjari 
Teaser by: Gergely Ofner