Periodontist, painter, author and set designer Maziar Shahzad-Dowlatshahi has staged his debut play which is based on a work by Argentine-Chilean-American playwright Ariel Dorfman.
Dowlatshahi’s play is titled ‘Requiem for a Girl,’ a surreal and psychological adaptation of Dorfman’s ‘Death and the Maiden,’ Honaronline reported on its Persian website.
The play will be on stage till mid-May at Paliz Theater House in Tehran. Dowlatshahi has adapted, designed and directed the play.
“For my first theatrical experience, I decided to base my work on a well-known play I could relate to.” the director said. After selecting Dorfman’s work, he rewrote the plot and dialogues of the original play to make them closer to his mindset, but the overall structure is the same.
Dowlatshahi has gone on an excursion from realism to psychological surrealism. “Many of the happenings are not real. They all take place in a nightmare,” he says.
The story is about Paulina, who unlike her husband, is incapable of looking towards the future. She is a hostage of the horrors of her past. Years before, during the military dictatorship in her country, she joins a resistance movement.
Later she is kidnapped by the government’s secret police and subjected to days of physical torture during which she refuses to reveal the names of her compatriots, including her husband Gerardo.
In Dowlatshahi’s adaptation, the events following this point all occur in Paulina’s mind. She seems to have died in a torture chamber at 4 in the morning and this is where the story breaks free from its realistic moorings and her vengeful spirit sets out in search of her torturer.
Rehearsal sessions for the play lasted six months. Cast members include Diana Fat’hi, Rouzbeh Hessari, Maral Abdollahi and Ata Arefi.
“In the original text by Dorfman, the atmosphere of the play is punctuated with light and shade. I’ve placed figments of her imagination in shadow and used cascades of light in contrast,” Dowlatshahi says.
In the dialogue, Dowlatshahi includes indirect references to poems of Forough Farrokhzad (1935-67). “These are not clear and obvious referrals. My paintings and scripts have always been under the influence of her poems.”
Paliz Theater is located at No. 69, Sepand St., Azodi St., Karimkhan Ave.
