text, stage & direction Amir Reza Koohestani
sounds & music Martin Shamoon Pour
production manager & director’s assistant Mohammad Reza Hosseinzadeh
video & technical direction Hessam Nourani
with Saeid Changizian, Fatemeh Fakhraee, Negar Javaherian, Elham Korda, Ahmad Mehranfar, Mahin Sadri
show in Persian with surtitles
surtitles technician Negar Nobakht Foghani
translation from Persian to English Vali Mahlouji
running time 1h20 (no interval)
production Mehr Theatre Group
Creation in Tehran, Iranshahr Hall, December 2009 – January 2010
with the support of the Dramatic Arts Centre, Tehran
company & tour manager Pierre Reis
SYNOPSIS
January 8th, midnight, a suburb of Tehran, it snows. Four young women are rehearsing Jean Genet’s play The Maids in a house.
Ali, Fatima’s fiancé, who is doing his military service in the police, joined them. He is not supposed to be there, but Fati insisted. Defying the law that forbids a soldier to carry a weapon in a private place, he promises the Duty Officer to return to the police station before dawn. The snow stopped him. Abdi has also joined the rehearsal. They are forced to spend the night in this house.
The next day, when Ali wakes up, he is alone and his weapon has disappeared.
But the house is not the place of the plot, nor the weapon the real issue. The play weaves a series of phone conversations after that night. Implicitly, the dialogues evoke the current situation of young people in Iran seeking ways to be heard.
A central figure in theatre in Iran, Amir Reza Koohestani, writer-director has enjoyed success in Europe since 2002. He recently collaborated with Oriza Hirata and Sylvain Maurice in the creation of the show Des Utopies ? Between symbolism and realism, never ceasing to escape the limits imposed by censorship, his work holds up a mirror to his society in the face of the audience.