TEHRAN – An Iranian troupe is performing Spanish dramatist Federico Garcia Lorca’s 1945 play “The House of Bernarda Alba” at Tehran’s Vahdat Hall.

Ali Rafeie is the director of the play. He previously staged Garcia Lorca’s “Blood Wedding” and “Yerma”. The two plays along with “The House of Bernarda Alba” are referred to as Garcia Lorca’s rural trilogy.

The play tells the story of an elderly woman, Bernarda, whose husband has just died, and she asks her five daughters to go through an eight-year mourning period according to her family’s tradition.

Roya Teymurian, Maryam Saadat, Maedeh Tahmasebi, Nasrin Derakhahan, Parisa Saburi and Reyhaneh Salamat are the main members of the cast for “The House of Bernarda Alba”, which will be on stage until January 20, 2019.

Having a Ph.D. in theater from Sorbonne University in France, Rafeie is also the director of the acclaimed plays “Fox Hunting”, “It Does Not Snow in Egypt”, “Crime and Punishment”, “The Maids” and “Nightmares and Memories of a Bath Attendant about the Life and Murder of Amir Kabir”.

His last play “Nightmares and Memories of a Bath Attendant about the Life and Murder of Amir Kabir” was selected as the best play of the year in 2016 by Iran’s Critics and Theatrical Writers Society of the Theater Forum.

Photo: A scene from “The House of Bernarda Alba” by Ali Rafiei.

ABU/MMS/YAW