Iranian theatre director and playwright Mohammad Yaghoubi has won the third prize at the Toronto Fringe Lottery 2016.
He was awarded for his ‘A Moment of Silence’ (2000), which earlier won the Iranian Playwrights Society Award (2012) at the Iran Theatre Forum for Outstanding Writing.
The play looks at the impact of the 1979 Islamic Revolution through the imagination of a writer, Honaronline reports.
It is translated into English by Torang Yeghiazarian, and had staged readings in 2012 by Golden Thread Productions in San Francisco, and in 2015 in California, directed by Bella Warda.
‘A Moment of Silence’ was also translated into French by Liliane Anjo and had a staged reading in Brussels, Belgium at Theatre de Poche (2014).
A member of the Canadian Association of Fringe Festivals (CAFF), the Toronto Fringe, Toronto’s largest theatre festival, is part of the ‘Fringe movement’, which is a worldwide network of independent theatre festivals.
It is a festival where anyone can put on any show, without having to pass through a jury – where theatre students can mount their first production outside of school, where emerging artists can get their big break, and where established artists can test out new work, reports the festival website.
The selected works were awarded during a lottery that took place on November 20.
Yaghoubi, 48, is an award-winning playwright, director and screenwriter, currently living in Toronto, Canada. His other plays include ‘Drought & Lies’, ‘Writing in the Dark’, ‘Moon on the Water’, ‘The Only Possible Way’, ‘Geraniums’, ‘Red and the Rest’, ‘Dance of Torn Papers’, ‘Winter 1998’, and ‘The Pillowman’ (Martin McDonagh).
