‘The Maids’ at Entezami House Museum

Jean Genet’s ‘The Maids’ is underway at Entezami House Museum in Tehran. The play is a 1947 attempt by the French novelist, playwright, poet and essayist to analyze the mores of a bourgeois society he previously used to vilify.

The show opened on February 9 and will run through March 16. It is designed and directed by Sepideh Seyfouri, 36, and Fatemeh Saremi, 32, who are both actresses and theater directors. They are in the cast, together with Elnaz Tarikhi, 33, according to Tiwall (tiwall.com), the website where tickets are available.

In the play, two housemaids, deeply resentful of their inferior social position, want to take revenge against society by trying to destroy their employer. “When their attempt to betray their mistress’s lover to the police fails and they are in danger of being found out, they dream of murdering Madame, little aware of the true power behind their darkest fantasy,” says Good Reads (goodreads.com) in a review.

The maids love Madame. This means, in Genet’s language, that both of them would like to become Madame, to be integrated into the social order instead of being outcasts; but they hate her at the same time because they are rejected by the society they long to be in.

The hour-long play starts each evening at 7:30 pm at the venue on Ahmadi Street, Andarzgou Blvd.

Last July, theater director Maryam Malmir in an adaptation of ‘The Maids’ had staged the play ‘Papin Sisters’ at Entezami Hall.