Hearing
شنیدن
Synopsis and Significance:
The play depicts the story of three female students at the University of Tehran living in the university dormitory that is disciplined and monitored under the strict surveillance of dormitory officials. Two of the girls hear some male voices and start searching for the source of these voices while being interrogated by the dormitory authorities. The girls’ quest is in line with an engaging and intimate journey of remembering and confessing. Through recollecting figments of memories and their alternation with verbal, visual and aural expressions in the present, the line between reality and fiction blurs. The girls with their over-head cameras enter a Kafkaesque journey to discover the truth. At the core of this journey lies the enigmatic mediatized dramaturgy of interweaving verbalism and imagism. During eighty performances, it attracted 10-12 thousand spectators. Hearing is the first Iranian play invited to Festival d’Avignon (2016).
Playwright’s Country of Origin:
IRAN
Production History
August 2015: Tehran and more than 50 performances in 15 countries (including Festival d’Avignon 2016)
What countries has it been staged/read in?
France, Germany, Japan, Italy, Switzerland, Belgium, Austria, Greece, Serbia, Portugal, Brazil, Macedonia, Netherland, Sweden.
More Information:
Name of the Playwright(s)/Creator(s) in English (Farsi)
Year of Writing
Year of the First Staging (if applicable)
Major Theme(s):
Surveillance, modal dilemma, subjective nature of truth, women’s insecurity and the destructive force of judgmental behaviour, absence, and memory
