European Centre for Art, Culture and Science

Wednesday June 4 2008 / Internationalization

Café Mediterrané: Spotlight on Contemporary Iranian Theater

Iran, particularly its capital Teheran, is the focal point of this Café Méditerrané. In this fourth edition of the series we welcome Farindokh Zahedi, professor and 'mother' of contemporary theatre in Iran. Zahedi will elaborate on the role and meaning of Iranian contemporary theatre, showing video clips to illustrate her ideas. Zahedi is visiting the Netherlands in connection with Connecting Stories, a project aimed at the collaboration between theatre producers from Iran, the US and the Netherlands.

The other guests include Iranian and Syrian directors. Hamid Pourazadi, for example, is praised for his apt direction of a Goldoni comedy. A beautifully styled version of García Lorca's Yerma by Reza Goran was presented at the recent Fajr theatre festival in Teheran. Earlier, Goran directed a controversial play based on French textual fragments from World War II about the wounded returning from the war. Yaser Khaseb impressed many with his Mysterious Gift during the Dancing on the Edge Festival. Show Cola, by Raghda Charani (Damascus), addressed issues young people struggle with today; it was very well received at the Cairo Experimental Theatre Festival and will travel to the Netherlands and Belgium next November. Moderator: Chris Keulemans

For the Café Mediterrané series, Dare2Connect regularly invites professionals from the Middle East and North Africa in order to discuss cultural issues in the Arab and Islam world. Recent developments and current themes form the bases of the meeting series.

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