CREATION 2023
Text and direction Amir Reza Koohestani
Dramaturgy Samaneh Ahmadian
Director’s assistant Dariush Faezi
Lights and scenography Éric Soyer
Video Yasi Moradi, Benjamin Krieg
Music Phillip Hohenwarter, Matthias Peyker
Costumes Negar Nobakht Foghani
Performers
Ainaz Azarhoush
Mohammad Reza Hosseinzadeh
Show in Persian language with surtitles
French and English translations and surtitles adaptations Massoumeh Lahidji
Surtitles operator Negar Nobakht Foghani
Estimated time 60 minutes
Production, administration, promotion Pierre Reis – Bureau Formart, Paris (FR)
Communication and logistics assistant Yuka Dupleix – Bureau Formart, Paris (FR)
Production Mehr Theatre Group, Paris (FR)
Coproduction Kunstenfestivaldesarts, Brussels (BE), Berliner Festspiele (DE), Athens Epidaurus Festival (GR), Festival d’Automne à Paris (FR), Théâtre de la Bastille, Paris (FR), La rose des vents – scène nationale Lille Métropole – Villeneuve d’Ascq (FR), La Vignette, scène conventionnée, Université Paul-Valéry Montpellier (FR), Théâtre populaire romand – Centre neuchâtelois des arts vivants, La Chaux-de-Fonds (CH), Triennale Milano Teatro (IT), Festival delle Colline Torinesi / Fondazione TPE (IT), Noorderzon Festival of Performing Arts & Society (NL)
Creation residencies Théâtre populaire romand – Centre neuchâtelois des arts vivants, La Chaux-de-Fonds (CH), KWP Kunstenwerkplaats and Les Tanneurs, Brussels (BE)
Project supported by the Ministry of Culture – DRAC Île-de-France
With the support of The Institut français
SYNOPSIS
The Iranian writer and director Amir Reza Koohestani tells us about his country through the thoughts and dialogues of a woman and a man who want to run from it.
A journalist in prison asks her husband to help a young girl blinded by a bullet fired during the Iranian demonstrations to reach England through the Channel Tunnel. They have to travel 27 kilometres in less than a few hours and risk being hit by the first train of the morning.
The playwright imagines the man and his wife training on either side of the prison wall. From this exercise for a better life comes a reflection on today’s Iranian society.
Amir Reza Koohestani’s theatre takes up contemporary themes and explores them in a free, sober and poetic way. The aim is not to say everything, to show everything, to explain everything, but – as the playwright confided in Avignon in 2022 – “to make the spectator active by leaving him a space for creation, interpretation and feeling”.
TOUR 2023
. 16 – 20 May / Les Tanneurs, Kunstenfestivaldesarts, Brussels (BE)
. 15 – 16 June / Performing Exiles, Berlinerfestspiele, Berlin (DE)
. 20 – 21 June / Athens Epidaurus Festival (GR)