Docudrama to Attend Greek Festival in June

The play ‘From the Basement to the Roof’ written by Mahin Sadri and directed by Afsaneh Mahian will have two performances at the Athens and Epidaurus Festival in Greece, June 8-9.

A production of Shieveh Theater Company, the play was staged in Tehran last winter and the Greek festival will mark its first international appearance, Mehr News Agency reported

The docudrama tells the story of ‘The Yellow Dogs’, an underground rock band from Tehran which immigrated to New York. In 2013, one of the band members murdered three of his colleagues and injured another before committing suicide.

The much-lauded, award-winning play is structured as four intermingling monologues performed by the murderer’s sister, the massacre’s sole survivor, the drummer’s friend, and an old acquaintance.

The performance takes viewers on a journey from a basement in Tehran to a roof in Brooklyn, all the while painting a grim picture of the migrant experience.

Saeed Zarei, Nasrin Derakhshanzadeh, Mehran Shoja and Ilkay Bilgic are in the cast. The four actors are different from the cast in the Tehran performance. “When our presence in the festival was finalized, the original cast was involved in other projects, so I decided to use a new set of actors for the European performance,” Mahian said. The rest of the crew members are the same.

Founded in 1955, the Greek festival is known as one of the leading classic cultural events in the world. It is annually held at the ancient theater of Epidaurus (located in the Peloponnese). The preserved theater is part of the archeological site of the city.