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Arash Abbasi Will Restage Anna Karenina

Arash Abbasi Will Restage Anna Karenina

TEHRAN.(Iranart) - T heater director and playwright Arash Abbasi intends to restage his popular play ‘Anna Karenina’ at selected theaters in Tehran.

The performance, which is an adaptation of Leo Tolstoy’s namesake novel, is scheduled for early in the next Iranian year (starts in March), Mehr News Agency reported. 

Theater Halls of the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance plus Tehran Municipality are two of the venues that will host a limited performance of the play, the director said. 

Anna Karenina was staged in two different periods last summer in Tehran (at Iranshahr and Shahrzad Theater halls). It was nominated in three categories at the 36th Fajr International Theater Festival last month and won the best actress award for Masoumeh Rahmani.

“Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina (originally published in 1877) provides a vast panorama of life in Russia and of humanity in general. In it Tolstoy uses his intense imagination to create some of the most memorable characters in literature.” Goodreads.com wrote about the story.

The novel’s story centers on Anna, a sophisticated woman who abandons her empty existence as the wife of Karenina and turns to an affluent man named Count Vronsky.

Abbasi has modified the script, which is a free adaptation of Tolstoy’s novel. “The script is contemporary and reflects today’s atmosphere and conditions,” he said, adding that he has remained loyal to the main theme of the novel.

“The rest of the plot is of my making. I have always believed that I should stage classical works of literature in a form quite different from the original. In fact, it is this idea that matters most in classical works,” the director has been quoted as saying.

Abbasi’s adaption is a two-actor play in which Rahmani and Behnam Sharafi perform.

 

Anna Karenina Arash Abbasi
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