Faculty and staff

Parjad Sharifi is an Iranian-Canadian scenographer, performance maker, and researcher. He has been involved in over 100 productions as a set, lighting, and projection designer, as well as a director, deviser, and performer.

Parjad has won multiple Jessie Richardson Awards for his designs and has collaborated with various performance companies in Vancouver and across Canada, including Fight With a Stick, The Arts Club, Vertigo Theatre, Caravan Farm Theatre, Neworld Theatre, Leaky Heaven, Electric Company, Rice and Beans, Theatre Conspiracy, Rumble Theatre, Pi Theatre, 605 Collective, and Kokoro Dance, among others. He is a full member of the Associated Designers of Canada.

His recent design work includes set and lighting design for Rice and Beans’ Lasa NG Imperyo (Taste of Empire), which was performed at the PuSh International Performing Arts Festival. Other significant recent design work includes set design for The Arts Club’s Teenage Dick and lighting design for The Arts Club’s Dolly Parton’s Smoky Mountain Christmas Carol.

Parjad’s recent directing credits at UFV include productions of Rhinoceros by Eugène Ionesco, Art by Yasmina Reza, and Pariah (Outcast) by August Strindberg.

Parjad's scholarly work closely aligns with his artistic practice, focusing on digital performance, virtual reality, immersive environments, and environmental scenography. His research includes a chapter titled "Bioscenography: Towards the Scenography of Affection" in Presence and Absence: The Performing Body. Currently, he is working on an environmental scenography project and an immersive 360-degree virtual reality experience. This research explores scenography shaped by the psychology of place attachment and the deep sense of place in both personal and collective narratives. Other areas of research include object performance, intercultural performance, postdramatic theatre, and devised theatre.

If you would like to know more about him, visit his website here.

MFA - University of British Columbia

BFA - Soore University

Scenography, Digital Performance, Technical Theatre, Theatre Production, Intercultural Performance, Devised Performance, Directing, Modern and Postdramatic Theatre

Sharifi, Parjad. “Bioscenography”, 2nd Global Performance: Visual Aspects of Performance, November 2011.

Sharifi, Parjad. “Chronos of A Dead Machine, Creation of A Character by Bioscenography”, DRHA, Sensual Technologies, Collaborative Practices of Interdisciplinary, September 2010.

Book chapters

Sharifi, Parjad. "Bioscenography: Towards the Scenography of Affection." Presence and Absence: The Performing Body, edited by Adèle Anderson and Sofia Pantouvaki, Oxford: Inter-Diciplinaryo, 2014.

Sharifi, Parjad."Bioscenography: Towards the Scenography of Non-Representation." Activating The Inanimate: Visual Vocabularies of Performance Practice, edited by Filipa Malva, Oxford: Inter-Diciplinary, 2013, pp. 75-85.