Less than a year after actor, writer and theater director Jafar Vali’s demise, his last play will be staged in Tehran.
Despite the fact that he was suffering from heart disease and respiratory disorder last November, Vali was rehearsing the play ‘Whisper in My Sound Ear’ with its two actors, Hormoz Hedayat and Iraj Rad, both 71. However, due to Tehran’s worsening air pollution, Vali was hospitalized in early December 2016 and passed away on December 17 in Tehran at the age of 83.
He was preparing the two-character play, about the last day of two old men, for the 35th Fajr International Theater Festival in January and was scheduled to stage it after the festival at City Theater in central Tehran.
Now, the cast members Rad and Hedayat as well as actor Ali Bigham, 53, are rehearsing again to stage the play in the context of Vali’s approach and design, Mehr News Agency reported.
The story is about two old migrant men who decide to commit suicide. But first, they want to enjoy the last day of their lives to the fullest.
A graduate of acting from the University of Tehran, Vali started acting in and directing theater in 1957.
During his long and distinguished career he played in over 30 movies and TV series including ‘The Cow’ directed in 1969 by Dariush Mehrjui, ‘Tight Spot’ by Amir Naderi (1974), ‘Captain Khorshid’ by Nasser Taqvai (1987), ‘Spring in Fall’ by Mehdi Fakhimzadeh (1988) and ‘The Reward of Silence’ (2007) by Maziar Miri and in the TV series ‘Hezardastan’ (1987-1999) by Ali Hatami and ‘The Enigma of Shah’ (2010-2016) by Mohammad Reza Varzi.
He made over 30 teledramas shown on state TV from 1960 to 1977. He also worked as a voice-over artist in cinema for 10 years and taught acting in the Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Tehran until 1987. In his last years, Vali was less active in theater but appeared in two plays directed by Nasser Husseinimehr, an author, theoretician and professor at Tehran University.
One of the plays was an adaptation of ‘Ward No. 6’, a short story written in 1892 by Anton Chekhov; and the other was ‘Woyzeck; an unfinished story based on a play written by German dramatist, poet and prose writer Georg Buchner (1813-1837) whose work was left incomplete following his death. The story was completed posthumously by a group of authors, editors and translators.
