THE PERSIAN QUARTER
By Kathleen Cahill
FREE READING Monday, April 26th @ 7 pm
Directed by Alexandra Harbold
Company:
Michael Behrens, April Fossen, Bijan Hosseini, Deena Marie Manzanares, Melanie Nelson
TWO WOMEN * TWO COUNTRIES * TWO GENERATIONS
The play is both a story told on a Persian carpet and a piece of political history, set in the United States and Iran between 1979 and 2009. In Tehran in 1980, Ann is an American hostage and Shirin, an Iranian revolutionary student, is one of her captors. Thirty years later their daughters, Emily and Azadeh, meet accidentally in an empty classroom at Columbia University during the visit of the Iranian President Ahmadinejad.
SLAC Sparks: THE PERSIAN QUARTER
PLAYWRIGHT'S NOTE
"I wrote the play, inspired by what is happening in Iran these days- especially what is happening to the women, their passionate heroism, what they've lived through and what they are willing to do in honor of their country. I wanted to remember my life there, when I lived in Iran, more than thirty years ago, to give meaning to my memories and to try to understand what I didn't understand when I was a young woman living there. The play though, isn't a memory. It's a re-evaluation. And it's a question. Actually, it's a lot of questions."
KATHLEEN CAHILL (Playwright)
Ms. Cahill has received many awards for her work, including the Jane Chambers Playwriting Award, a Connecticut Commission on the Arts Playwriting Award (twice), a Massachusetts Artists Foundation Award, a Rockefeller Grant, a National Endowment for the Arts New American Works Grant, and a Drama League Award. Her plays include THE STILL TIME (Georgia Rep/Porchlight Theatre, Chicago), WOMEN WHO LOVE SCIENCE TOO MUCH (Porchlight), HENRI LOUISE AND HENRY (Cleveland Public), SLAM (Plan-B Theatre, UT), and the screenplay DOWNTOWN EXPRESS, a film for David Grubin Productions in NY. With composer Michael Wartofsky she wrote the book and lyrics for THE NAVIGATOR and FRIENDSHIP OF THE SEA; with Deborah Wicks LaPuma she wrote DAKOTA SKY (Olney Theatre), WATER ON THE MOON (Signature Theatre readings), and CAPTIVATED (Kennedy Center New Works Festival). Other musical works include the opera CLARA, FATAL SONG, and A TALE OF TWO CITIES: PARIS AND BERLIN IN THE TWENTIES (all Maryland Center for the Performing Arts).
Coverage from Salt Lake Theater Examiner - Salt Lake Acting Company previews the future with reading of The Persian Quarter
Photo Credit: Shadi Ghadirian, Qajar 1998
