Beyzai’s ‘Death of Yazdgerd’ Staged

The masterpiece ‘Death of Yazdgerd’ by the acclaimed Iranian playwright, theater and film director and researcher Bahram Beyzai, 78, was staged on Saturday, December 24, at Bazigah Theater in Tehran.

The play has seen numerous performances earlier. This time, playwright and theater director Raha Haji Zeynal directed the show at the first edition of Theater of Bahram Beyzai National Festival, Azad News Agency (ANA) reported.

The play is Beyzai’s poetic imagination of the circumstances that led to the death of Yazdgerd III (624-651), the last Sassanid king of Iran. His death was mysterious: his corpse was discovered in a mill, but the cause of death was unknown.

Hard pressed by the Arabs, Yazdgerd flees to Marv where he is slain by a miller. The play begins with the Zoroastrian high priest of the Persian Empire, accompanied by the imperial army commander entering the mill to put the miller, accused of murdering the emperor, on trial.

The miller, his wife and his daughter, trying to exculpate themselves give different versions of the incident. As the story shifts, more questions emerge than answers.

A central theme in the play is the social hopelessness among the people of the time, on the eve of the Arab Islamic conquests, and inequality in the class-based society, in which the wealthy elite amass unimaginable wealth.