TEHRAN –Entezami Hall of the Iranian Artists Forum (IAF) will be playing host to a reading performance of French dramatist Jean Genet’s “The Maids” on Friday. 

The performance will be directed by Maryam Abdoli with a cast of young actors including Moazzameh Yahyai, Baharak Tavassoli and Farahnaz Asadi. 

The play centers on housemaids Solange and Claire who enact bizarre fantasies while dressed in the clothes of their employer, Madame.

The focus of their role-playing is the murder of Madame and they take turns portraying both sides of the power divide. Their deliberate pace and devotion to detail guarantees that they always fail to actualize their fantasies by ceremoniously "killing" Madame at the ritual's dénouement.

“The Maids” was first performed at the Théâtre de l’Athénée in Paris in a production that opened on April 17, 1947, which Louis Jouvet directed.

The play has been revived in France, England and the United States on multiple occasions, sometimes with men playing the roles of the maids.

A TV dramatization Stuepigerne was done by Danish national broadcaster Danmarks Radio in 1962. A film adaptation of the play was released in 1974. Swedish composer Peter Bengtson adapted the play in 1994 for a chamber opera.

Genet loosely based his play on the infamous sisters Christine and Léa Papin, who brutally murdered their employer and her daughter in Le Mans, France, in 1933.

Two Persian translations of the play by Bahman Mohasses and Media Kashigar have previously been published in Iran and the play has also been performed by several Iranian groups. One of the troupes performed the play with director Ali-Akbar Alizadeh at Tehran’s Molavi Theater in November 2018.

Reyhaneh Nabian directed the play with her group Alma in May 2016 at Tehran’s Da Theater.

Director Maryam Malmir also staged “The Papin Sisters” based on the play at the Entezami Hall in Tehran in July 2016.

SAB/