Play Based on Game ‘Mafia’

The play ‘Mafia’ directed by theater director Afrooz Foruzand will be staged at Tehran’s Baran Theater in February.

It was written by Foruzand in 2013 when she was focusing more on writing scripts than directing plays, Honaronline reported.

Based on the famous party game ‘Mafia’, a group game of strategy, survival and the ability to spot a fraud,  the imaginary setting is a small town where the local townspeople and the mafia are in an all out battle for survival.

Originally invented by a psychology student Dimitry Davidoff, in Russia in 1986, the game has found many variations. In its simplest form, it is played by two teams: the mafia and the innocents. At the start of the game, each player is secretly assigned a role affiliated with one of the teams.

The game has two alternating phases: night, when the mafia may covertly “murder” an innocent, and day, when surviving players debate the identities of the mafia and vote to eliminate a suspect. Play continues until all the mafia has been eliminated or until the latter outnumber the innocents.

“It is a psychological game and I tried to combine it with a social approach which is always my concern,” Foruzand said.

Last January she staged ‘Avalanche’ at Sayeh Hall of City Theater in Tehran after a 12-year hiatus. The play which was a narration of what goes on behind the scenes in Iranian theater attracted a large audience and was named the best-selling work of the year at Sayeh Hall.