A family affair: Iranian performer combines documentary and theatre in new KVS show

At the age of five, Sachli Gholamalizad left her native Iran with her family for the suburbs of Antwerp. Her search for her roots formed her development as the creator of what she calls documentary theatre.

In her first production for KVS, A Reason To Talk, she interviewed her mother - a very personal context which resonated deeply with the audiences.

"We all have a mother," she says. "So naturally many are able to recognise themselves in A Reason To Talk. However personal the approach to this performance may be, it is about universal themes and this is why it works. It connects people - it transcends boundaries."

Her latest production, (Not) My Paradise is a one-woman show that begins at her grandparents' nightclub on the shores of the Caspian Sea and takes us on a journey through the joys and ills of family relations and the fracture between East and West reflected in the sometimes conflicting memories of her parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins and nightclub patrons.

It is a bit of an investigation on her part: "I wanted to know who my grandfather was. I heard from one side loving stories about him as some kind of god and from the other side, my grandmother's side I heard these terrible stories of how he treated her and I couldn't match these two images of that one person.

"I decided to go back and find out who he was through stories of my uncles and my grandmother and I actually constructed a whole new story and I regained a new connection with my family because I didn't know who they were."

'Ashamed of my own happiness'

Going back to Iran raised a lot of other issues. For instance, why had her family left the country? "When I would ask my mother why we left she would always give another explanation.

"I always thought that our lives were in danger, in great danger - that we had to escape, but it was just a choice, it wasn't a lesser choice but it was a choice because they didn't want to live in an Islamic republic, which was totally the opposite of what they were used to and they didn't want to bring up their children in a very extreme religious society.

"But for me when I go back and I meet other people my age in Iran, in Tehran who stayed I always feel like I missed something and missed having gone through all those traumas, having gone through the war and the religious change. I felt ashamed of my own happiness. "

Leaving her theatre education aside for a while, she started making documentaries in Iran. But she found that, in fact, documentary work and fiction are not so clearly separated. "I found in Iran, for instance, making documentaries is much more difficult than making fiction because in Iran there are so many things people cannot say.

"In order to not bring them in danger we had to find fictional ways of telling their stories, in other words, using fiction to show the reality more."

She found this combination essential to enable her to communicate her message to a theatre audience such as with (Not) My Paradise: "I always wanted to combine theatre and documentary since there are some things you cannot say in theatre when you're trying to invent a world.

"I don't want to invent a world, I want people to see a world that is real, that is here, but that they don't normally have access to. I want them to see a world that they haven't seen. I want them to understand our differences and to see our differences are not that different."

But, of course, despite these weighty issues, she does want to entertain: "I'm not a historian, I don't know much about politics, that's not my field. My field is to bring stories to people and make them feel connected and not feel the differences between us."

(Not) My Paradise at KVS, September 20, 22, 23 and 24 at 20.30. Matinée September 22 at 12.30. In Dutch, surtitles in French and English