Aylin Salahshoor

Aylin (Oyan) Salahshoor is a doctoral student in Drama, Theatre & Performance Studies at the University of Toronto. Her master’s research traced the history of Iranian women playwrights from the Constitutional era to the early Pahlavi period, examining their negotiations with modernity, gender, and performance. In her PhD, Aylin continues her exploration of Iranian theatre, focusing on how censorship, opacity, and memory shape performance aesthetics. She is particularly interested in the politics of biopoetics—how life, language, and silence operate within theatrical practices under regimes of control. As a performer, she has appeared in English at Soulpepper Theatre and Swim Team at The Theatre Centre, and her original work Presence of an Absence investigates exile, fragmented memory, and the embodied politics of remembering.