TEHRAN- Da Theater House in Tehran will be playing host to a reading performance of American playwright David Mamet’s play “Oleanna” on Saturday. 

The performance will be directed by Amir Mohammad Shavali with a cast composed of Mahshid Delavari and Shavali himself. 

In the 1992 two-character play, a male college instructor and his female student sit down to discuss her grades and, in a terrifyingly short time, become participants in a modern reprise of the Inquisition.

Innocuous remarks suddenly turn damning. Socratic dialogue gives way to heated assault. And the relationship between a somewhat fatuous teacher and his seemingly hapless pupil turns into a fiendishly accurate X-ray of the mechanisms of power, censorship and abuse.

The play’s title, taken from a folk song, refers to a 19th-century escapist vision of utopia. 

Mamet adapted his play into a 1994 film of the same name starring William H. Macy and Debra Eisenstadt.

SAB/