The Blind Owl, the magnum opus of Iranian writer and translator Sadeq Hedayat (1903-1951) is adapted for a play to be staged at City Theater in Tehran.
Theater director, theoretician, translator and professor of Tehran University Nasser Husseinimehr is going to stage a free adaptation of The Blind Owl at the theater’s Chaharsou Hall on March 27, 2017.
It took him three years to receive the performing permit for his adapted play from the Performing Arts Center at the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance, Husseinimehr told ISNA.
“In the past two years, since we started the rehearsals, we lost half the cast members. Now we have to find new members before we resume the rehearsal in early fall.”
“In writing the play, I tried to make it akin to contemporary literature and imbue it with a fresh mood. My intention is to create unprecedented scenes in Iranian play writing,” he said.
There are lots of dramatic elements in the original story. “Regardless of how Hedayat regards the society and moralities, his work is what I’m concerned with; because it has many pure visual moments with potential to make dramatic scenes.”
For his adaptation, Husseinimehr did extensive research, “which was a very difficult job, for the entire story is premised on mental fabrication. A few celebrated writers told me that The Blind Owl is impossible to adapt. But I finally finished my adaptation, rendering an illusory, surrealistic ambience.”
“Soon I’ll be holding an acting audition … I will work with young thespians, because I believe that they are more potent and flexible for such a show.”
“The Blind Owl will be the most challenging work of my carrier, because large sections of the audience will have read the story,” Husseinimehr said.
Some consider The Blind Owl the most important work of modern Iranian literature, The Blind Owl is a haunting tale of loss and spiritual degradation. Replete with potent symbolism and terrifying surrealistic imagery, Sadeq Hedayat’s masterpice details a young man’s despair after losing a mysterious lover. And as the author gradually drifts into frenzy and madness, the reader becomes caught in the sandstorm of Hedayat’s bleak vision of the human condition.
