YALDA: An Iranian Twelfth Night
On the eve of Yalda, the longest night of the year, a twin, shipwrecked on the shores of the Caspian Sea and searching for her lost brother, cuts her hair and takes on the role of a man in order to survive in the land of Islamia.
My latest play, Yalda, is an adaptation of shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, which fits perfectly into Post-Revolution Iran. It had its first reading at UCI, directed by Eli Simon of the New Swan Shakespeare Center.
Splinters of a Careless Alphabet
Workshop of Splinters of a Careless Alphabet directed by Elina de Santos
Splinters of a Careless Alphabet brings philosophy, history and religion to life through three students and a prominent Western philosopher on the eve of the Iranian Revolution. On one snowy Tehran evening two students will be forced to come to terms with the choices they make that night and the aftermath which will affect their faith, relationships and ultimately the future of the country.
On the eve of the Iranian revolution Ali, a graduate student at Tehran University visits his French philosophy professor at the University to discuss mystical Islam while his fiancé, Lily is out protesting. He hears gunshots and runs out into the crowd to look for her. He finds her, but in the next moment everything changes. The evening ends with Lily in solitary confinement grappling with her dwindling faith in the Revolution as the country moves more and more toward an Islamic state. The rest of the play is a retelling of that night between Lily, Ali, (who dies at the demonstration), Ferry, a history student they met at the protests (and the angel of history in disguise) and French philosopher Henry Corbin. The audience is not aware that everything that will happen occurs in Lily’s head, either as imagination or memory, making use of the concept Henry Corbin was famous for: the collective unconscious.
Just as I was moving into theater, the lockdown moved everything online. The Dramatist Guild and 24 Hour Plays, hosted an online reading.