TEHRAN – A documentary theater focusing on the moral inferiority of homeless women caused by drug addiction and prostitution in a slum neighborhood in southern Tehran was staged at the 36th Fajr International Theater Festival last week. Director Amin Miri with his cast and research team spent over 18 months interviewing 53 women living in […]
TEHRAN – A documentary theater focusing on the moral inferiority of homeless women caused by drug addiction and prostitution in a slum neighborhood in southern Tehran was staged at the 36th Fajr International Theater Festival last week. Director Amin Miri with his cast and research team spent over 18 months interviewing 53 women living in the Darvazeh Ghar neighborhood in order to communicate on the subject.
To document their play, they also collected information about the issue from libraries. The information and interviews were transcribed in about 7000 pages that Miri handed to writer Sanaz Bayan to compose the play.
“We were in contact with each other until she completed the play named ‘Shelter’, which was warmly received by theatergoers,” Miri told the Persian service of ILNA on Monday.
He said that it was difficult to win the women’s trust at first. However, he found them quite agreeable after a while.
He also noted that it is a difficult task to get the official cultural organizations’ green light for staging a play and a documentary theater in particular.
“When you focus on a sensitive subject, everybody guards against it; they feel concern over what may happen as result of the performance,” he lamented.
Miri said that if the theater troupes working in documentary theater had the support of the government, everything would go well.
Miri’s troupe premiered “Shelter” at the Qashqai Hall of Tehran’s City Theater complex in February 2017.
He invited many MPs and directors of governmental organizations concerned with women’s issues in order to draw their attention to the subject.
A number of the interviewees also watched a performance of the play at that time.
Miri is an old hand at documentary theater. In 2013, he staged “The Blue Feelings of Death” about a group of children and young adults who committed murder.
