Veteran actor Jamshid Mashayekhi celebrated his 81st birthday at the inauguration of the play ‘Hedgehog’ at Tehran’s Baran Theatre Hall on Sunday.
Mashayekhi was the special guest of the first performance of the play and watched it with the public before cutting his birthday cake.
Born in Tehran, Mashayekhi began professional stage acting in 1957 and has acted in over 150 movies, plays and TV series.
In recent years, he has appeared mostly as an elderly grandfather.
He received the best performance award for ‘The Grandfather’ (1985) from the First Festival of Non-aligned Countries in North Korea. He has also won the Crystal Simorgh twice at the Fajr International Film Festival.
After seeing the play, written, directed and acted by Bahram Afshari, Mashayekhi said Afshari’s individual creativity surprised him.
“The one-man performance was well directed and made me reflect upon it greatly. It portrays in the best way the problems all actors have experienced during their career,” he noted.
The story is about a rural youth who travels to Tehran to make his dreams about becoming an actor, come true. A video clip in which several Iranian artists including Baran Kosari, Amir Jafari, Payam Dehkordi, Mehran Ahmadi and Navid Mohammadzadeh perform is also shown in the play.
The play is on stage till December 29 at the theatre at No. 292, Palestine St., Enqelab St.
