Shakespeare’s Plays Take Persian Hue

Theater director Asghar Nouri is to stage a repertoire of three plays by Shakespeare in the first quarter of the next Iranian year (beginning March 21, 2018) at Sangelaj Theater House in Tehran.

Accompanied by traditional Iranian music, the stories, adaptations of the original works, will be narrated by one of the characters in each story.

“The show will begin by performing ‘Edmund’s Account of King Lear’ at the venue’s main hall, then the audiences are taken to the lobby to watch the play ‘Iago’s Account of Othello’, and in the end they will return to the main hall for ‘Horatio’s Account of Hamlet’,” Nouri was quoted as saying by Mehr News Agency.

Since 2010, Nouri has been doing research on how to perform Shakespeare’s plays using the techniques applied in Iranian traditional plays like naqqali.

Iranian storytelling tradition of naqqali is the narration of important stories from Iranian fables, myths and epics. It is usually performed before a huge cloth or canvas hung on the wall, on which are painted the events of the story being told by the ‘naqqal’ or storyteller. The art of naqqali was inscribed on UNESCO’s Intangible Heritage List in 2011.

Nouri, 41, was born in Tabriz, the capital of East Azarbaijan Province. He got his undergraduate degree in French literature but decided to study directing for his master’s degree. He has also translated several books into Persian.