TEHRAN -- A group of Iranian students is scheduled to perform a reading of “Leaving”, Vaclav Havel’s tragicomedy play, at the Molavi Theater on December 29.
Sadeq Vafaii will direct the play, which will star Bahman Vakhshur, Sayeh Kabiri, Mona Qasemi, Mohammad Ganji, Abbas Khademolhosseini, Ehsan Zahireddini and Hamidreza Shayegan.
“Leaving” was the first play written by Vaclav Havel after his final term as president of the Czech Republic.
The play is about a man forced to leave the state-owned villa he has called home for years, when his time in public office has ended.
In the years before 1989, when the fall of the Berlin Wall and the upheaval in Eastern Europe led to the Czech Velvet Revolution and Havel’s elevation to the presidency of his country, he had begun work on the play, Richmond’s Orange Tree Theatre director Sam Walters said in The Independent in December 2011.
Inspired by Shakespeare’s “King Lear” and Chekhov’s “The Cherry Orchard”, Havel wrote “Leaving”.
Havel (1936-2011) was a Czech writer and dramatist famous for his work in the theater of the absurd, who became a politician and served as the last president of Czechoslovakia, and the first president of the Czech Republic.
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