"Ivanov" by Amirreza Kohestani was published

It  tells the story of stagnation and helplessness of the anti-hero of the modern age, who is confused between staying and migrating, commitment and betrayal, responsibility and lack, in a divided and passive state.

With a creative adaptation of Anton Chekhov's first full-length play, Kohestani represents the contemporary Iranian society in the historical background of Ivanov.

The intelligent use of the contemporary colloquial Persian language and the representation of the social concerns of the middle class of Iran such as immigration, preserving the style and mood of Chekhov's dramas, has given it an Iranian and modern flavor.

This book was published by Gilgamesh Publications in 110 pages.

Amir Reza Koohestani was born in 1978 in Shiraz, Iran. At the age of 16, he began publishing short stories in local newspapers. Attracted to cinema, he took courses in directing and cinematography and created two unfinished films. After a brief experience as a performer, he devoted his time to writing his first plays for the Mehr Theatre Group: And the Day Never Came (1999) and The Murmuring Tales (2000).

 

With his third play, Dance on Glasses (2001), Amir Reza Koohestani gained international notoriety and found the support of several European theatrical artistic directors and festivals. This was followed by the plays Recent Experiences (from the original text by Canadian writers Nadia Ross and Jacob Wren, 2003); Amid the Clouds (2005); Dry Blood & Fresh Vegetables (2007); Quartet: A Journey North (2008); Where Were You on January 8th? (2009); Ivanov (2011); The Fourth Wall (from the original play England by Tim Crouch, 2012) which was presented one hundred times in an art gallery in Tehran.

Since 2006, Koohestani has worked frequently in Germany where he has created more than 15 productions*, some of them in collaboration with Mahin Sadri.

 

In September 2018, he was invited along with other directors (Tiago Rodrigues, Pascal Rambert, tg Stan, Luk Perceval, Christiane Jatahy) – for the opening of La Comédie de Genève (Switzerland) – and he created a short play in French based on Miss Julie by August Strindberg.

 

Summerless, premiered in May 2018 at the Kunstenfestivaldesarts in Brussels and presented at the Festival d’Avignon in 2018 – is the third part of a trilogy about time and memory (Timeloss, Hearing, Summerless), which was presented at the Festival TNB, in Rennes (France) in November 2018.