My dramaturgical note for the productin:

In the crowded theatre scene of Tehran in the 2000s and 2010s, finding tickets to Mohammad Yaghoubi’s plays was like finding treasure. College students would form long queues in front of box offices on Sunday afternoons to score the half-price tickets reserved for them on this day. Inside the theatres, every seat was filled, every aisle was packed, and the theatres would hand out cushions to those who were late to the queue but lucky enough to get unseated tickets, so they could sit more comfortably on the ground. Sitting on the ground meant being the closest to the world of the play. This closeness captured the spirit of Yaghoubi’s theatre: raw, direct, and deeply human.

There was a reason for this hype. Yaghoubi’s work was both fresh and well-crafted. On the one hand, he staged plays about political events that had happened only months before the opening night. The characters and stories felt immediate and alive. On the other hand, his plays had beautiful dramatic arcs, were full of creative formal devices, and were performed by some of the best theatre actors of the time, such as Aida Keykhaii, Baran Kosari, Ali Sarabi, and Houman Barghnavard, among others. Audiences could see themselves, their friends, and their families in the characters. Anyone who has done theatre long enough knows how rare it is to create something both so carefully made and so attuned to its moment.

The story of the 1979 Iranian Revolution and the subsequent Iran-Iraq War (1980–1988) has often been told on a grand scale as a story of ideology, power, and geopolitical transformation. Yet A Moment of Silence turns to the quieter, more intimate dimensions of those years. Yaghoubi’s play explores how the Revolution and war entered homes, how they created and disrupted love, friendship, and family, and how real people navigated those changes through humor, curiosity, fear, and - of course - silence.

Nearly 25 years after its premiere, A Moment of Silence still endures. The technologies it portrays may seem dated, but their dramaturgical use remains strikingly original. Yaghoubi employs headphones and cameras to reveal the characters’ point of view, drawing us into their most private spaces. Telephones, by contrast, become instruments of intrusion, devices that break the boundaries of safety. Here, technology is not merely a stage prop but a way of revealing who the characters are and how they connect, withdraw, or reach toward one another.

For Yaghoubi, theatre is a living and breathing form. He is unafraid to revisit and reshape his work, believing that no living thing should be left without care. In 2023, he revised A Moment of Silence in response to Iran’s women’s movement, reflecting his belief that women are at the forefront of social change. The version now on stage is this newer iteration, one that listens closely to the voices of the present while carrying the echoes of the past.

What does a play from 2001 Iran have to say to us in this moment and place? In my conversations with the students working on the production, many spoke about how the play’s questions - about freedom of speech, personal autonomy, political change, and also about hope, fear, and belonging - resonate deeply with their own experiences and concerns today. Through Torange Yeghiazarian’s thoughtful translation, the play feels both accessible and meaningful to non-Iranian audiences, bridging cultural distances while preserving its specificity. For me, A Moment of Silence is an example of how theatre can make history more tangible and personal, while also building bridges between people.