Ghosts (IR)
Theatre group from Iran had to come to Norway be allowed to perform Ibsen’s Ghosts
Directed by Seyed Mohammad Hosseini / Teatergruppen Mordad
Mrs Alving wears a Muslim headscarf. Her son, Osvald, has just returned from Paris, where he lived as an artist, and they are now talking to pastor Manders. The pastor is afraid that Osvald has been corrupted by living so long abroad, in a city where the pastor believes immorality is rife. Where men and women live together without being married, for instance. Nevertheless, Osvald defends the more liberated world.
The text is as Ibsen wrote it. The production is an example of how the script of a play takes on new relevance when it is transposed to a different cultural and religious context.
The generational conflict
The Mordad theatre group has wanted to put on Ghosts for a long time, but has not been able to do so in its own country. The première will take place in Norway at the Ibsen festival. The actors find that the issues taken up in the play are of strong current interest. They point out that in Iran there is a deep divide between the older and the younger generations. Members of the older generation, often with a deeply religious view of life, have serious problems with the more secular younger generation. When Ibsen’s Ghosts appeared in 1881 it raised a furore, and performing it was forbidden in many parts of the world. It raises issues such as marriage as an institution, social conventions that can break down freedom and children born to unmarried parents.
Cast: Abdolrahman Hushyar, Shahrokh Shahir, Fallahi Shiva, Mona Mahmodzadeh. Direction and design: Seyed Mohammad Hosseini. Actor and assistant: Kamal Hashemi. Assistant: Davood Zare. Translator and interpreter: Mohammad Hadi.