Michael Shayan isn’t himself the first time we meet, right before a performance of his solo show Avaaz at the Olney Theatre Center. Garbed in a gorgeous golden caftan, Shayan is, in that moment, wafting through the audience as Roya, Queen of Gays.

“The pre-show is so fun because I go around in character as my mother,” Shayan says when we finally meet for a video chat about the one-person show, in which he portrays his larger-than-life Iranian-Jewish mom, Roya.

For the audience, that portrayal, in all its loving and scrutinizing detail, begins with the pre-show greeting. “I’m her, and I’m welcoming you into my home for this party,” Shayan says. “That element has always been part of the show because I want it to feel like you’re really being welcomed into a party. I want the play to feel like a party.”

Directed by one of Broadway’s hottest hands, Moritz von Stuelpnagel (New York, New York), leading a team of acclaimed designers, Avaaz is more than a party. It’s a labor of love that’s getting Shayan noticed as much for his acting as for his writing. The playwright and Emmy-nominated writer on TV series like Discovery’s The Book of Queer and HBO’s We’re Here is eyeing several meaty roles for when he hangs up the caftan.

But right now, he’s pouring himself into Avaaz, and its endearing, probing look at immigration and otherness, motherhood and survival, told through the inspiring story of his mother, who immigrated alone from Tehran in her twenties.

Raising her only son, on her own in Los Angeles, she built a life for both of them, and laid a foundation for her entire family to immigrate to the U.S. “She’s this fabulous presence,” says Shayan. “And the more you feel that, the more you feel her larger-than-lifeness, I think the more effective it is when that mask starts to come off.”

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By telling his mother’s extraordinary story, Shayan also explores his own. Throughout Avaaz, their mother-son interaction conveys his struggle to balance his conflicting identities — meeting expectations of being Iranian but not too Iranian, American but not too American, gay but not too gay, Jewish but not too Jewish.

“I think Avaaz is kind of my way of reclaiming these identities on my own terms and in my own way,” Shayan says. “The show is about my mother. I play her, but because I’m playing her, it’s also ultimately about me in some way. You’re seeing my embodiment of her.”

The show depicts his path of discovery, too. “I realized there’s so much that I don’t know, there’s so much that she hasn’t told me, that she’s been unwilling to tell me,” he says.

“In understanding those parts of her, I started to understand more about myself, about the ways in which I can use my larger-than-lifeness to avoid. I just realized the parallels between us, I realized that a lot of the tricks in her bag are tricks that I’ve also used to construct my life. So, the show is really about taking off the mask. It’s not all about my mother. I am revealing parts of myself, both in the acting and in the writing.”

METRO WEEKLY: I want to start off, because it’s at the top of your bio, with Emmy-nominated writer, which I think is amazing. And it’s very, very recent, just last year. It was for The Book of Queer, which I think more people should know about. Did you go to the ceremony? How was it?

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MICHAEL SHAYAN: I went to the ceremony. It was beyond my wildest dreams. We took one home for the show. [Nominated for six Daytime Emmys, the show won an award for Editing.] I brought my mother to the Emmys, which was really I think part of this whole experience. If you had told me a couple years ago that I’d be going to the Emmys, I wouldn’t have believed you. And then to say I’m going with my mother — several years ago, we didn’t have that relationship. And so it was a really special, full-circle moment to be there.

The Book of Queer is such a special show to me. I was a writer and consulting producer. And I think there’s a throughline, which is telling these stories that we haven’t seen on screen or on stage. I’m drawn to those kinds of stories. I’m drawn to larger-than-life characters. I’m drawn to larger-than-life histories.

MW: I actually just watched the first episode. Are there any particular historical figures that you specifically wrote, or, as the writer’s room, were you all tackling every segment?

SHAYAN: It was an interesting process. I’ll tell you my favorite line, which I wrote. This is one that I really love, which is he’s describing Stonewall, and he’s describing how it was sort of like this very rundown place, like the water was undrinkable, the glasses were dirty. And one of the lines is, “I asked for a Dirty Martini, not a dirty martini.” We did an episode on Lincoln and Lincoln’s lovers. Lincoln had a number of men that he’s alleged to have had relationships with, and we do a whole episode on it. There are letters! We include the real history. We interviewed a number of the leading Queer historians on the show. And so I called them “Lincoln’s Four Scores.” We did it sort of like Bachelor style.

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MW: Something I thought was funny about the Emmys, or it was funny to me, maybe not from where you were sitting. You guys as the writing team were up against The Kelly Clarkson Show, Jennifer Hudson Show, Ellen DeGeneres Show. But the winner turned out to be Island of the Sea Wolves. Was that unexpected? Have you seen Island of the Sea Wolves?

SHAYAN: [Laughs.] I have not seen Island of the Sea Wolves.

MW: You need to catch up on it, I guess.

SHAYAN: Yeah.

MW: Do you think we’re going to get another season of Book of Queer?

SHAYAN: I hope so. I don’t have any news for you at the moment, but the show and the nomination have certainly led to a lot of exciting work for me. And I feel like I’m in this really crazy moment where worlds are coming together. My first TV job was working on We’re Here.

MW: We did covers for the first two seasons. And I interviewed all the queens.

SHAYAN: Oh, fab. So, Domino — Joshua Domino Schwartz — was one of the costume designers on We’re Here. He won two Emmys for his work. He’s one of the only people who’s made me weep over a garment. I mean, just doing what he can do with fabric, he really tells a story. And so, Domino, having worked with him on We’re Here, [when] we were doing this play, I was like, “You have to come. Will you come and design?” And he agreed to join, and we’ve worked on Avaaz a number of times together.

The costume that he made is just incredible. It really brings me to life as Roya, as the character of my mother. And my posture changes. Domino’s worked with every drag queen west of the 405. He’ll say, “And east of the 405, too.” [My show] isn’t drag, to be clear. It’s not at all drag. But I’m in this sort of caftan, so my physicality is different. And the way I move around in this space is different. So that was a cool moment of worlds coming together.

MW: Speaking of collaborators, Moritz von Stuelpnagel, who is a revered Broadway director, how did he come aboard and how has that collaboration worked for you?

SHAYAN: I call him Mr. Broadway. Every other show on Broadway, it’s Moritz. It feels like that. So, he’s just been the most incredible collaborator. I mean, he’s the best I could have possibly asked for with this show. We started working together right before the pandemic. We did a reading of the show. He had read the script, he loved it, wanted to come on. We did a reading together at La Mama, and then we just kept building the show. We took it to festivals around the country. We got support from Sundance. We did it at South Coast Repertory’s Pacific Playwrights Festival and Ojai and Theatre Aspen. And the show kept evolving. Then, this past summer, we had our world premiere at South Coast Rep and it was a hugely successful run.

So what would I say about Moritz? He’s just the most generous collaborator. First of all, he himself is incredibly funny and sharp. So, I think he’s one of the best directors of comedy that we have in the theater. A lot of the improv that you saw in the show, we workshopped what those moments could be, and crafted those moments together in the rehearsal room. So, we were laughing all the way through rehearsals and tech.

And the play has real drama and urgency and truth as well. So, he brings those two sides together in a way that I haven’t seen anyone else do. He can really go deep on the comedy. He has an encyclopedic knowledge of comedy. He also brings the dramaturgical eye. So we talk a lot about, what is the humor serving here? Why is this character making a joke in this moment? Is it to distract, to change the subject, to hide some kind of vulnerability?

The humor has a real dramaturgy to it, too. And part of the movement of the play is this back-and-forth between, hopefully, incredibly funny belly laughs and then big gut punches that are often very close together. I think that’s how it happens in real life, too, when you’re having an argument with someone that you love. You can be laughing and crying through the argument. So, [Moritz] really helped. He’s like a conductor: marcato, staccato, legato. And he’s the best.

MW: As far as unexpected moments onstage, something else I happened to witness in the performance I saw — and it wasn’t on you — was a wee technical issue with playing a track, a song, which I imagine in any show is a moment of fear and anxiety for the performers onstage, but especially if you’re the only performer onstage. Where does your mind go in a moment like that?

SHAYAN: What went through my mind? Well, it’s live theater, that’s what’s so exciting about it. I always lean into those moments. I had so much fun with that. I was like, “Let me just go on a little riff.” And the audience was right there with me. I mean, they were laughing, and at one point… It was at a moment when there was dance. I was like, “Let me just get up and do it.” And people were clapping along. And that’s the container of the show. The container of the show is, you’re here at my house for a party. So, if we’re at my house for a party and this thing goes wrong, what am I going to do? I’m going to keep going.

I try to be incredibly present, and I’m so in it at that point that I’m just responding as the character would, so I don’t even know what I said in the improv because it was a moment of that improv. But I just kind of was amused by it. I was like, how would the character use her defenses and her tricks and her charm and wit to respond to this moment? And that’s kind of what I did. I thought it went over really well.

In a way, it kind of added, I think, to the experience because this is something that’s only going to happen once. I talked about the improv in the show. I am very much a playwright first. And I like to be exacting with my words and word-perfect. Then, I mix things up with these moments of interplay and exchange with the audience, so it’s fluid in that way. I trained as a magician. Magic was my first art form. And so, I really learned how to roll with the punches, and how to make that fun for me and for the audience, hopefully.

MW: Have you kept up your tricks?

SHAYAN: Oh, my God, well, yes. I had a full-circle moment. So I grew up at the Magic Castle [in Hollywood]. I grew up performing there. Funny enough, I was the youngest member of the Castle, and I can tell you that story. But recently, I did an invited performance of Avaaz. This producer David Kissinger, who I work with, brought a bunch of co-hosts, and it was like Conan O’Brien and a number of amazing show-runners came together and hosted this performance at the Magic Castle. It was in the same theater that I grew up performing in, which was a full circle, and I was doing my play. So that was really cool.

But have I kept up the magic? Yes. Magic really gave me a sense of spectacle and theatricality and fabulosity. That was my first encounter with that stuff. So, I just love it. It’s the impossible becoming possible. Magic is in everything I do. I’m actually writing another solo show that’s magic meets sex, drugs, rock and roll.

MW: Something else that’s really interesting about seeing the show is that there were clearly a lot of Iranians in attendance. I could hear people getting the jokes in Farsi, before your character translated the joke. They were relating to specific aspects of the culture, where those of us who don’t speak Farsi are on the outside looking in, which I think is an experience that is beneficial to people, in general. With that in mind, what sort of atmosphere are you hoping to create? Because you acknowledge the Iranians in the audience, and you are, by virtue of that, acknowledging that not everybody is Iranian.

SHAYAN: I wrote the play recognizing that most audiences in the American theater are not Iranian, because this is a story that we haven’t seen on stage. I wanted the play to be an invitation to welcome Iranians and non-Iranians into the theater. So, when there are Iranians in the house, she’ll say something in Farsi and they’ll laugh, and it kind of sets up this interesting thing where, I didn’t anticipate that in the writing, because she says the thing in Farsi and then she explains it. But what’s really exciting is they’ll laugh, and then she’ll explain it, so it sort of destabilizes you a little bit, or it invites you as an audience member, if you’re not Iranian, to lean in a little more.

And what’s so great about the show, and what I love about the show, is that there’s something for everyone. It’s a Queer show. It’s an Iranian show. It’s a Jewish show. It’s an immigrant story. It’s a mother-son story. If you have a mother, you’re going to find something in this play that you relate to, hopefully.

Iranians come up to me after the show and they’re like, “Wow.” Whatever background they’re from, so many of them see their story in this. But also the non-Iranians, they say the same thing. They’re like, “That’s my mother too.” Or, particularly, a lot of folks who are immigrants, and from different backgrounds, will come and say, “We had a similar experience of escape.” That’s really exciting to me.

And what’s also really special, Moritz and I continue to learn more about the play every time we do it, every city we take it to. We learn more about the character. I learn more about myself every time. My goal is to really just put my heart on the stage and to lay it all bare. And in exposing and being as truthful as I possibly can about my dynamic with my mother and being incredibly specific about that, what I found is there’s a shared experience. There’s universality in that, too.

MW: Well, there’s a very deep thing with mothers and gay sons that is just — I think we all could unpack a whole one-man show. Your mom, she raised you on her own. Something I thought was really powerful in the play is that she came as a young single woman and then brought over her mom and other members of the family.

SHAYAN: Yeah, my mother brought her family over from Iran. She came against their wishes. Her father wanted to stay in the country for political reasons, and there was real uncertainty about what life in America would be like. And it was really taboo for her to go as a single woman in her twenties, to go and live on her own. Especially in our culture, they weren’t exactly excited about that.

MW: Other immigrant stories that I know of, it’s generally been a man or a couple, as opposed to a single woman. I think at any time, but certainly, 30 or 40 years ago, that’s especially brave.

SHAYAN: My mother really wanted to get an education, and that was not possible in her motherland given what was going on at the time. So, that was a big motivator for her to leave. When she got married in L.A., which you know that story from the play, she had to put that on hold. Then, ultimately, she went and put herself through school while working three jobs and raising me, which I think is really special. I mean, she says in the play, “Michael was growing up and at that time so was I.”

There was a sense that we were growing up together in some way. And as incredible as that is, it was also challenging. She wasn’t always around because she had to be working. So I sort of tried to unpack that experience in a way that’s both honest and fair to her, and honoring her sacrifice and her story, and also investigating my own feelings about it and my own struggles growing up in that context.

MW: Have you ever brought a man home to meet your mom?

SHAYAN: Ummm… No.

MW: No?

SHAYAN: No.

MW: Do you think you would?

SHAYAN: This is what’s funny. So now my mother is part of this group. She helped start this group in L.A. of mothers of Queer Iranians. And they’ve become a nationally recognized group. They’re called We Do Care: Iranian-American Parents of LGBTQ. But I call them the power moms. They have monthly meetings. And now they’re trying to set up their sons. They’re all comparing notes and resumes. So now, she plays the matchmaker.

That’s also part of what was exciting to me about the show: it’s an Iranian character who, one of the first things she says is, “They love me, the gays.” She’s Roya, Queen of Gays. The show, at times, can feel like she’s going into a standup-like rhythm, joke after joke. Of course, what’s she hiding underneath that? But, yeah, it’s not the character that we would expect. It’s not the character that we typically see. When Iranians are portrayed on screen or stage, we’re often portrayed in a very stereotypical and sensationalized way. And so, I wanted to turn those stereotypes on their head and portray an authentic story onstage.

MW: You end the show with “Woman, Life, Freedom,” a call to support the women in Iran now. Do you have female members of your family who still live there? What is it like for them?

SHAYAN: My family’s in L.A. My mother and her siblings are in L.A. But L.A. is what I call Tehran-geles. It’s the largest home to Iranians outside of Iran. So, I think the “Woman, Life, Freedom” movement has really touched all of us. And it is just amazing to me that this movement continues on. It’s beautiful. One call coming out of Iran is “Be Our Voice.” And in some small way, as an artist, I hope to add my voice to the chorus that’s calling out for “Woman, Life, Freedom.”

“Avaaz” means a song in the process of being sung. I think that is true. When I think about my mother’s story, it feels very much like her song is in motion, in process. And I could say the same for the song of our Iranian people and community.

MW: You’re taking the show on tour. Where are you headed?

SHAYAN: Coming to major cities near you. It’s incredible. I mean, I feel really lucky to be working with this team, Moritz and our designers. It’s a Tony and Emmy Award-winning team. Beowulf [Boritt] just won his second Tony, and he did our set. Domino, who I mentioned. Everyone on the team is at the top of their game right now. So yeah, it just feels very special to be telling this story, particularly now with what’s going on in the world. I feel like the play speaks to what’s happening in a very personal way that hopefully brings us together in our shared humanity. In hearing this one person’s story, I hope to bring us some light and laughter and celebration and truth.

MW: Growing up in L.A., did you always think you were going to be in arts and entertainment? Was there anything else that you thought of doing?

SHAYAN: Yeah, I grew up really doing magic and I was sort of the class clown. I would come home and watch standup. I was obsessed with Chris Rock and Wanda Sykes and Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David. I didn’t know how my life would take shape.

I was touring as a magician. I was big on the Bar Mitzvah circuit. My first gig was for one of the heads of CAA. It was the head of business affairs. Then I did the AOL holiday party, and I started my own magic company with Magic in LA. And I still own that domain, by the way.

MW: Are there many Queer magicians?

SHAYAN: I’m the only one. [Laughs.]

MW: I don’t know any magician who makes that part of their act.

SHAYAN: I mean, I’m joking, but this new play that I’m writing, the character is basically the Elton John of magic. And yeah, my act, growing up as a kid, I was turning water into Manischewitz wine. Always a hit. I was sort of making fun of stereotypes about Iranians and about my culture. I was turning those on their head in a small way.

I was at Harvard and I took a theater class. And my professor, he knew about my background as a standup and as a magician, and he was like, “You should try writing a play.” And theater kind of gave me a bigger container to explore questions that I had about my own identity. I was trying to negotiate these different identities, and really grapple with what it means to be inhabiting these things which don’t quite go together — Queer, Iranian, and Jewish. All three of these communities have a lot going on. And that created tension in me. Theater gave me a way to unpack that and ask these questions, ask what are impossible questions. With Avaaz, I’m basically asking, how can I understand my mother? How can you understand your mother? It’s a question of understanding my mother, which is a lifelong task. It is the role of a lifetime.

MW: What does your mother feel about being the subject of this play?

SHAYAN: [Laughs.] At first, she was like, “Why do you want to write a play about me?” And now she’s like, “When are we doing my play?” I’m like, “It’s your play now.” She’s like, “When we are going to Broadway?” I’m like, “It’s all coming, baby.”

And yeah, I think it’s really brought us closer. It’s my way of honoring my mother and also honoring our rich culture and our traditions and our history. So, it was incredibly special to have her there.

MW: Was that the first time she’d seen it onstage?

SHAYAN: That was the first time she’d seen this version. Yeah. We learn so much about the play every time. That’s part of what’s been amazing about getting to take it on tour and to do it around the country, is you learn more and more. The play tells you what it wants to be. The character tells you where she wants to go. And so, part of my job as a writer is to listen. And as a writer and actor, I’m channeling this character. I’m channeling this story. It’s beyond my wildest dreams.

I mean, the whole thing is beyond my wildest dreams. It’s kind of crazy, because while I’m here, we opened the show, and I have a number of other writing commitments and upcoming gigs. I’m wearing lots of different hats, but it’s such a gift to be able to just be present with this show now and embody my mother’s story.

Avaaz runs through April 7 at the Olney Theatre Center, 2001 Olney-Sandy Spring Road in Olney, Md. Tickets are $55 to $90. Call 301-924-3400, or visit www.olneytheatre.org.