TEHRAN –An Iranian troupe plans to stage an adaptation of French author Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s “The Little Prince” and Romanian-French writer Eugène Ionesco’s “Rhinoceros” at Tehran's City Theater on Tuesday. 

Nima Gudarzi is the director of the play, which combines the plots of both “The Little Prince” and “Rhinoceros”. 

Entitled “The Little Prince 2023”, the play tells the story of the Little Prince in a modern world. In this new and modern world, he had no choice but to transform from a little prince into a rhinoceros, leaving behind his former self.

Mohammad Sadeq Asadi, Shahin Bamdad, Maryam Tavalai and Elham Zarei are the main cast for the play, which will remain on stage until July 28.

French aviator Antoine de Saint-Exupéry wrote “The Little Prince” while living in the United States.
 
The novella is about a downed pilot in the Sahara Desert, frantically trying to repair his wrecked plane. His efforts are interrupted one day by the apparition of a little prince, who asks him to draw a sheep.
 
Published in 1943, the book has been read by millions of children in more than a hundred languages. It is also read by adults for its allegorical meaning.

In Ionesco’s “Rhinoceros”, the inhabitants of a small, provincial French town turn into rhinoceroses. Ultimately, the only human who does not succumb to this mass metamorphosis is the central character, Bérenger, a flustered everyman figure who is initially criticized in the play for his drinking, tardiness and slovenly lifestyle, and then, later, for his increasing paranoia and obsession with the rhinoceroses. 

The play is often read as a response and criticism to the sudden upsurge of Fascism and Nazism during the events preceding World War II, and explores the themes of conformity, culture, fascism, responsibility, logic, mass movements, mob mentality, philosophy and morality.

ABU/