text & direction Amir Reza Koohestani
production manager & director’s assistant Mohammad Reza Hosseinzadeh
music Ali Bahrami
light design Farshid Mosadequ
with Shiva Falahi, Mohammadhassan Madjooni
show in Persian with surtitles
translation from Persian to English Vali Mahlouji
surtitles operator Mahin Sadri
running time 1h20 (no interval)
Amid the Clouds was written in 2004 during a residency at the Royal Court Theatre in London in the frame of “The 2004 International Residency for Emerging Playwrights” and created at the Kunstenfestivaldesarts the 8th May 2005.
production Mehr Theatre Group
coproduction Wiener Festwochen, Kunstenfestivaldesarts
company & tour manager Pierre Reis
SYNOPSIS
There exist voices that can pierce the still night.
They seem visceral and primitive; resonating from the dawn of time. These voices are laden with the memories of people forced off the land on which they live; forced to continue in a place unknown to them, in a language strange to them.
Theses are the voices that speak in Amid the Clouds. In this piece, the young author and director Amir Reza Koohestani blends the rythms of Persian narrative tradition and the stark reality of a refugee camp. He does so in an attempt to convey the contemporary situation in his native, unadorned and concentrated; giving space for that which is central: the birth of narrative.
On stage stands a large water-filled table and it is here Imour and Zina meet, both on their way to the Promised Land. Zina is pregnant, hoping to give birth and seek asylum on the opposite side of the English Channel. Imour is consumed by his attempts to silence the atrocious memories that haunt him. Their flight forces them both to confront who they really are.