Monadhil Daood has a large physical presence. He’s not particularly tall but he is commanding. He smiles with his eyes and his voice is deep and expressive, the kind that, when raised, would rumble with emotion and wash across its audience. It is no surprise that he has always acted, alongside his work as playwright and theatre director, on stages in Paris, London, New York, Tokyo, Washington and Amsterdam, as well as the Middle East. He’s one of the most recognisable Iraqi actors on Arab television, having starred in various prime time shows, most notably, as a Mafioso boss in a hit series, and as a police chief during the Tahrir Square demonstrations, which was filmed in Cairo in 2011, and caused a mini uproar in Iraq. His stage career, meanwhile, has brought him as much infamy as acclaim in his home city of Baghdad, from which he fled after staging a politically incendiary play at the age of 21. He could not have known it then, but that audacious move earned him exile for nearly three decades and only ended with the downfall of Saddam Hussein’s regime in 2003, when he finally returned to Iraq.

Yet Daood insists that...