Story Behind The Show

Shakespeare has always coincidentally aligned with Kamran’s life, and they say there are no coincidences. So, he’s followed that sign wherever it’s taken him. Born on April 23rd, 1994, to Mary and Bigan Saliani, Kamran somehow shared a cosmic connection with the Bard himself, who was also born in April… the 23rd… in 1564. From the beginning, storytelling was in his blood. He entered the world at 11:30 PM on a Saturday night at Albert Einstein Hospital in the Bronx, cementing, from his literal birth, a poetic kinship with Shakespeare.

His father, Bigan, a filmmaker who immigrated from Iran, would tell him stories of the Persian hero Rostam, filling Kamran’s imagination with the romance of his father’s homeland. His mother, Mary, who worked in film and broadcasting, read Harry Potter to him every night before bed. Growing up, his parents instilled in him a love of film, but it was his brother, Dimitri, who took him to a screening of The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, an experience that changed everything. At age nine, Kamran discovered the magic of epic storytelling, larger-than-life characters, and the power of heightened language, the very hallmarks of Shakespeare. Needless to say, stories were his lullabies. Kamran’s first taste of acting came as a freshman at Irvington High School, where he played Sam Warner in a play, coincidentally again, titled Shakespeare in Hollywood. Another sign. He was hooked. He went on to perform in numerous school musicals, playing Conrad Birdie in Bye Bye Birdie, the Narrator in Into the Woods, and Kenickie in Grease. He was head over heels in love with acting and knew it was his life’s mission.

After a grueling college audition process, Kamran was accepted into NYU Tisch School of the Arts and received his B.F.A. in Acting in 2016. He trained at the Stella Adler Studio, whose foundation, of course, is Shakespeare. At NYU, most students are cast in just one lead role during their time there. Kamran was cast in four, including Algernon in The Importance of Being Earnest, Bertolt Brecht in The Story of Black Marie, and a spy in Wilderness of Mirrors. But the role that changed everything was Pericles, Prince of Tyre. It’s one of Shakespeare’s least-known plays, and Kamran was honored to bring to life Shakespeare’s only Middle Eastern protagonist (Pericles is of modern-day Lebanese descent). As an Iranian-American actor, that meant the world to him and it forever solidifed the bond between himself and Shakespeare.

Fast forward to March 2020. COVID changed the world. In that moment of chaos and pause, Kamran realized life is too short not to go after what you love. So, he started a Shakespeare company. With the support of the Mayor of Irvington, NY at the time, Brian C. Smith, who just happened to have a Tony Award for producing Once on This Islandand is, as Kamran likes to say, “a really nice guy”, he launched the Irvington Shakespeare Company with Twelfth Night in the summer of 2021. Kamran played Malvolio. It was thrilling. And exhausting. Afterward, he took a short break to rest and regroup. 

On vacation, Kamran went looking for a low-budget Shakespeare piece to bridge the gap between seasons. Like any millennial, he opened YouTube, typed “one-man Shakespeare plays,” hit enter, and boom. A grainy thumbnail of a young Sir Ian McKellen appeared. Best known to many as Gandalf (The Lord of the Rings) and Magneto (X-Men), McKellen began on the stage and became one of the great Shakespeareans of our time. The title: Acting Shakespeare. Kamran clicked. Ninety minutes later, his life had changed. McKellen’s one-man show, part autobiography, part love letter to Shakespeare, was the most powerful theatrical experience Kamran had ever witnessed. He was in love, and after nearly twenty hours spent transcribing the script from YouTube, he found himself holding the first draft of the show, a work that would take another four years of painstaking editing and workshopping to fully bring to life.

He had to do it. The setup was simple: a few lights and a chair. Kamran started hunting for the rights—but everywhere he looked, nothing. He searched every database, every archive. Nothing. So he reached out to his former NYU director, Caroline Wood, and told her how much this show meant to him. She mentioned her husband, playwright Bruce Norris, might know someone in the London theatre world who could help. Kamran thanked her, crossed his fingers, and waited. Weeks passed. Then months. He started to let the dream go. 

Until Tuesday, February 8th, 2022. At 1:04pm, he got an email from Caroline. The message said: "I'd say you're good to go. :)"

Attached was a long email chain between Caroline, Bruce, and some very official-sounding people. And at the very bottom… was a message. 

From Sir Ian McKellen himself:

“I prefer small potatoes to large ones and I’d be very happy for Kamran Saliani to revive Acting Shakespeare for no charge. Please pass on my e-mail to him, in case I can help.”

And just like that, Kamran’s big break had arrived.

The Artist Behind the Parodies in Acting Shakespeare 

I perform parodies of Bo Burnham because, in my lifetime, he has felt like a present-day Shakespeare. Like the Bard, he reflects life back at us, brutally honest, funny, tender, and painfully self-aware. His work holds a mirror to our moment with rare clarity. Parody is my way of entering that conversation, not to mock, but to honor, interrogate, and expand it.

Parody, then, isn’t a detour from my voice; it is the craft of dialogue. It allows me to stand shoulder to shoulder with the artists who shaped me, raise the mirror a little higher, and ask: What do you see now?

Bo Burnham carries Shakespeare’s torch. He “holds the mirror up to nature” in a way that speaks directly to a new generation, reconnecting our shared humanity to texts that are ancient, but still urgent. Bo is Shakespearean in his own right, just as Ian McKellen is in his interpretation: fearless, playful, and profoundly humane. For me, Burnham’s voice sits in perfect conversation with the Bard. So the parodies aren’t departures. They’re bridges. They belong.

Words That Bind the Story

Special thanks to James Shapiro, whose generosity helped make this work possible. After my mother and father gave me Shakespeare in a Divided America as a Christmas gift in 2021, the book became a revelation to me, illuminating the powerful and enduring bond between Shakespeare and America. With great kindness, James Shapiro granted me permission to incorporate passages from his work into this show. Those words form an essential part of the piece before you, serving as one of the key threads that binds America and Shakespeare together at the very heart of our story. For that generosity, I am forever grateful.

 Shakespeare's Stage and the American Story 

I also perform “The Ballad of Junius Brutus Booth,” a parody of Stephen Sondheim's “The Ballad of Booth.” Sondheim, often referred to as the American Shakespeare, and his song feels almost miraculous to me: it captures, simultaneously, the spirit of Abraham Lincoln, William Shakespeare, John Wilkes Booth, and America itself. It holds comedy, tragedy, beauty, violence, theatricality and history together in a single breath.

Sondheim's music creates a bridge between Shakespeare’s stage and America’s story...a story in which a president, an actor, an assassination, and a play became forever intertwined. “Our American Shakespeare” follows that bridge, illuminating how deeply the Bard lives within our national imagination.

The final parody is of Molly Lewis’s masterpiece “Our American Cousin,” parodied here as “Our American Shakespeare.” This 4-minute-and-14-second work of breathtaking genius gives full life to the Shakespearean impact President Lincoln had on his countrymen, his enemies, and finally himself. It is a perfectly Shakespearean tune that reflects the emotional weight of a moment that changed the world forever.