Standing by new and risky ideas is difficult

Molly Sweeney is a two-act play by Brian Friel. It tells the story of its title character, Molly, a woman blind since infancy who undergoes an operation to try to restore her sight.

 

The director considered the restage of "Molly Sweeney" as a dangerous experience and explained about the performance of the play for the third time after about 6 years.

 

Morteza Mir- Montazaemi said about his decision: "From 2011 to 2014, despite all the difficulties, I have staged a play every year. But after performances of "Molly Sweeney" in 2014, for various reasons, I was unable to perform again. This situation continued until I decided to stage "Molly Sweeney" again with a fresh perspective and in the form of a new experience that I knew was very risky."

 

He spoke about the changes in theater audiences: The generation that works in theater today has completely changed; the same things happened in audience. The taste of audiences are very different from the pre-COVID-19. These changes make us pay more attention to the audience research process. Many of these audiences have not seen works before COVID-19 and are judging based mostly on what they have seen in the last few years.

 

Mir-Montazemi explained about the play: "In the writing process, I am always with the writer, and it has never happened to me to choose a completed play by an Iranian writer without rewriting. After several stages of rewriting, The final version becomes ready and it  is to be performed on stage. One of my main criteria for choosing a play is to have an attractive story; a story that is not only in line with my mood at the moment, but can also reflect today's social conditions. "Molly Sweeney" was an unknown and attractive story for me, but to perform it I had to go for new experiences and risks.”