Iranian Director to Expose Florian Zeller’s Lie in Tehran

TEHRAN.(Iranart) - Iranian director Saqi Atai plans to stage French playwright Florian Zeller’s “The Lie” in Tehran in the near future.

“The play has been translated into Persian by Mahmud Gudarzi, and this is the first time the play will be performed in Iran,” she told the Persian service of MNA on Saturday.

“Zeller’s plays usually move on the border between reality and imagination,” Atai said and added, “But what happens is different; i.e., the writer exposes the gap between reality and a lie. He creates a crisis in another, different environment.”

“By staging this play, I intend to say that there is a porous border between truth and a lie, and even when we are telling a lie there is a bit of truth hidden in our words,” she stated.  

In The Lie, Michel and Laurence are coming for dinner. But Alice has spotted Michel kissing another woman that very afternoon, leaving her with a dilemma. Her husband Paul believes it is better to behave as if nothing has happened; Alice is far from sure. An argument ensues, and as their own relationship is held up to scrutiny, the question as to who is being protected and why grows ever more difficult to answer.

Atai said that she plans to assemble a cast of professional actors for the play in order to shorten the duration of rehearsals.

Earlier in July 2017, she staged Zeller’s fellow dramatist Eric Emmanuel Schmitt’s Enigma Variations at Tehran’s Divare Chaharom Theater.

Source:Tehran Times