Présentation de la pièce Les Vieilles Filles d’Ali Shams

"Iran: theatre as a laboratory of the forbidden"

In partnership with the publishing house L’Espace d’un instant. With Jonathan Châtel (director and lecturer in theatre studies at the University of Louvain), Quentin Fondu (theatre sociologist) and Fahimeh Najmi (researcher and translator). The discussion will be enriched by readings of extracts from the play by Jando Graziani, Raffaelli Holguin, Murat Isikveren and Prisca Randimbivololona.

About the play Les Vieilles Filles: "The actions carried out according to the orders recorded on the audio cassettes make up the bulk of a special birthday day during which the old maids, all sisters, isolated and without real contact with the world of the living, idolise their father, who died years ago. But at night, it is a whole other story. In Les Vieilles Filles, which takes the form of a simple linear narrative on the surface – and yet impossible to publish even under the counter in Iran in the current state of affairs – Ali Shams offers an allegory of his country today by describing a frozen, paralysed and grotesque situation in which its inhabitants find themselves trapped."

The play was translated from Persian by Fahimeh Najmi and prefaced by Jonathan Châtel. Ali Shams was born in 1985 in Arak (Iran); he is the author of more than fifteen plays, most of which he has directed himself. In 2024 he was banned from leaving Iranian territory for two years. Since then, Ali Shams has opened the Shams Theatre House in a working-class neighbourhood of Tehran.