TEHRAN-The play “Death and the Maiden” by Chilean playwright Ariel Dorfman will be staged at the City Theater in Tehran from August 14.

Directed by Mohammad Hassan Olamai, the 75-minute play will have Maliheh Aghai, Hamideh Hashemi, Sahar Lotfi, Hossein Ommati, and Kamyar Ahmadi in the cast among others, ILNA reported.

A 1990 play, the setting is in the present time, in a country that is likely Chile but could be any nation that has recently transitioned from a long period of dictatorship to a democratic government. It explores the struggle for National renewal through the eyes of a victim of Pinochet's regime.

In the play, Paulina Escobar's husband Gerardo is to head an investigation into past human rights abuses. A Dr. Miranda stops at Escobars' to congratulate Gerardo. Paulina overhears them speaking and is convinced that Miranda supervised her prison torture sessions. She ties him to a chair and conducts her own interrogation, gun in hand. Escobar doesn't know whether to believe his distraught wife or his persuasive new friend. This white-knuckle thriller is a riveting intellectual and emotional tug of war.

It won the 1992 Laurence Olivier award for Best New Play and has since been staged worldwide. In 1994, it was adapted into a film by Roman Polanski.

Ariel Dorfman, 82, is an Argentine-Chilean-American novelist, playwright, essayist, academic, and human rights activist. He has been a professor of literature and Latin American Studies at Duke University, in Durham, North Carolina, since 1985.

Dorfman's work often deals with the horrors of tyranny and, in later works, the trials of exile. His works have been translated into more than 40 languages and performed in over 100 countries.

The play will remain on stage at City Theater through August 30.

SS/SAB