Novid Parsi on ‘The Life You Gave Me’: If Only

AMERICAN THEATRE: In Novid Parsi’s witty, moving The Life You Gave Me—which had its world premiere in 2025 at Idaho’s Boise Contemporary Theatre, and which appears in full exclusively in our Fall 2026 print edition—an Iranian American man tries to get his mother to leave and repudiate her abusive husband, his father. But the truth proves more complicated, in part thanks to two outside voices who interject with questions about the son’s right to tell his mother’s story, and about the narrative’s problematic representational politics. Parsi spoke with director Kimberly Senior (Ayad Akhtar’s Disgraced and The Who and the What) about the inspiration and artistry behind the play.