Well-known Iranian theatre director Alireza Koushk-Jalali, will stage the play ‘Nordost’ (literally northeast) in Cologne, Germany.
A prize winning work of celebrated German author Torsten Buchsteiner, the play is about the October 23, 2002 three-day Moscow siege, when Chechen rebels raided a theatre during a performance, Honaronline reported.
The story is narrated by three female characters. Zura, a Chechen ‘Black Widow’, who with 40 other hostage takers storms the Moscow Dubrovka Theatre; Olga, a Russian accountant and her husband and nine-year-old daughter, who are attending the performance of the musical ‘Nordost’ on that fateful evening; and Tamara, a Latvian doctor, on duty in an ambulance that night.
From three perspectives, the play narrates the outrageous attack on the theatre and the 850 members of the audience. A poisonous gas attack on the fourth day leaves all the attackers, and 130 hostages, dead.
The play has won the Else Lasker-Schüler Drama Award 2005 and the Galler Playwright Competition 2005.
Ali Jalali Ensemble, the theatre group directed by Jalali, has arranged the show on September 24 in Cologne, Germany.
Jalali, 57, is an Iranian theatre director and playwright. He has directed numerous plays, namely ‘The Last of the Ardent Lover’, ‘Monsieur Ibrahim and the Flowers of the Koran’ (Dortmund), ‘Children’s Opera’, among others.
