Destiny or Destitution

The play “Where Were You When Ophelia Killed Herself?” written and directed by Mina Mirza-Aqa is on stage at Neauphle-le-Chateau Mansion. 

Mirza-Aqa has written the play based on “Gravel” a short story by Nobel Laureate Alice Munroe. 

Munroe’s story begins with a narrator’s recollection of a rural gravel pit that she and her sister Caro lived next to during childhood. When spring comes, the pit fills with water. Though told by their mother to avoid the pit, one day the girls go to the area following their dog. There, Caro tosses the dog into the pit and then goes in to retrieve her. Caro cannot (or does not want to) get herself out and drowns before her frozen-with-shock sister comes to herself and summons their mother.

There is no such character as Ophelia in the story and the name Ophelia used in the title of the play has been taken from Shakespeare’s Hamlet. There she is a young noblewoman of Denmark who goes insane as she is unable to get over the grief of her father, chief counselor of the king, being killed by Prince Hamlet. 

One day filled with sadness, she climbs into a willow tree, but the branch on which she is sitting breaks dropping her into the brook and she drowns.

Both Ophelia in Shakespeare’s drama and Caro in Munroe’s story die at the end; however, it remains a mystery if they have died by accident or committed suicide.

Nasim Erfani, Mohammad Sadeq Malek, Parisa Mohammadi, Vania Khatibi and Tiba Fat’hi are in the cast.

Located at No. 1, Ziba Alley, on Neauphle-le-Chateau Street, the venue will be hosting the performance till September 17.