Mohammad Yaghoubi's A MOMENT OF SILENCE at SummerWorks Festival this August

Nowadays Theatre, in association with Modern Times Stage Company, presents the English-language premiere of Mohammad Yaghoubi's classic Iranian play, A MOMENT OF SILENCE.

SummerWorks Theatre Festival

Toronto, August 6-14, 2016

Shiva wakes up to find she has been asleep for three years. In that time, the world around her has transformed dramatically. Her friends and family seem different, strangers act oddly. It's Iran in 1980 and she has just slept through the Islamic Revolution.

A Moment of Silence is an award-winning play by celebrated Iranian playwright and director Mohammad Yaghoubi. It presents a surreal, poetic, and surprisingly comic meditation on Iran's turbulent history. It has been hailed for the playwright's "layered and imaginative approach to realism."

"A highly acclaimed play making its debut in Canada, bringing bold perspective to our all too apathetic political spheres. "-Tara Beagan (writer/theatre maker/indigenous arts activist)

Since its first staging in Tehran in 1998, A Moment of Silence has been revived numerous times and translated into English, French, Czech, Turkish and Kurdish. Iranian audiences voted it the second best play to emerge from Iran since the 1979 Revolution. Among its many awards are the Playwrights' Society of Iran's Best Play prize and the Toronto Fringe Festival's 2015 New Play contest.

"This is our first English-language production and we are delighted to be working with a very talented and diverse local cast and crew from Toronto," says Yaghoubi. "I'm excited to see how the play will resonate with audiences here."

Playwright Matt Jones helped Yaghoubi adapt the play for Toronto. "Mohammad's play offers a subtle political critique that Iranian audiences are better able to pick up on. We've had to work hard to find ways to make those nuances more easily intelligible," says Jones.

The play is directed by Mohammad Yaghoubi and features Lara Arabian, Parmida Kakavand, Sarah Marchand, Melanie Pyne, Maxime Robin, and Paul van Dyck. Matt Jones (Dramaturg), Helena Roy Magee (Stage Manager), Saeed Hasanlou (Set Designer), Setareh Delzendeh (Costume Designer), David DeGrow (Lighting Designer), Reza Moghaddas (Sound Designer), Mina Ketabian (Make Up Artist), Art Babayants (Assistant Director), Marjan Moosavi (Assistant Director), Mona Ketabian (Assistant Director). The show runs August 6-14 at Factory Theatre (125 Bathurst). Tickets are available at summerworks.ca.

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