Curtains Rise On Fear: Sulaimani Welcomes Kurdistan's First-Ever Horror Play

ERBIL (Kurdistan24) - The lights dimmed. The audience held its breath. On Friday, the curtain rose on something Sulaimani — and all of Kurdistan — had never seen before: a horror play.

"Briskanewe," directed by Raheen Rebwar and staged at the Fine Arts Society Hall in Sulaimani, made its debut as the first horror theater production in the history of both Kurdistan and Iraq, opening a chapter that the region's cultural scene has never before explored.

Speaking to Kurdistan24, director Raheen Rebwar described the story at the heart of the production. "The play follows a family that moves into a hotel to work there," he said. "At first, everything unfolds quite normally — but the hotel was built on cursed ground, a site where acts of cannibalism were once committed. Because of that dark history, the family begins to experience harrowing psychological turmoil inside the hotel."

The ensemble cast bringing this chilling narrative to life includes Shahryar Shirzad, Zhiwar Bakr, Savia Salam, San Abarash, Yad Dara, Kawan Rahman, Ale Aware, Bland Ibrahim, Kizhan Husseini, and Aro Hawser — each taking on a principal role. Raheen Rebwar noted that Zhiwar Bakr also served as assistant director on the production.

For Rebwar, the significance of the production extends well beyond a single performance. "As the first horror theater experience in all of Kurdistan and Iraq, horror theater here is still at the very beginning of its path," he told Kurdistan24. "But given the region's rich culture and its wealth of mysterious stories, it has the potential to become one of the most important and compelling theatrical genres in the future."

"Briskanewe," which runs for several days at the Fine Arts Society Hall, signals not just a creative milestone — but the quiet birth of an entirely new genre on Kurdistan's cultural stage.