A Moment of Silence

A Moment of Silence is an award-winning play by celebrated Iranian playwright and director Mohammad Yaghoubi. Surreal, poetic, and unexpectedly humorous, the play offers a deeply human meditation on Iran’s turbulent modern history. Presented with significant support from the new Princeton Humanities Initiative.

Shiva, the protagonist, wakes up to find she has been asleep for three years—only to realize she has missed the Islamic Revolution. Over the next decade, she continues to slip in and out of sleep, awakening each time to a drastically altered world: the war with Iraq, the murders of dissident artists, and upheavals within her own family. Layered with absurdity and poignancy, the play also follows the increasingly perilous journey of the playwright shaping Shiva’s story, as anonymous threats begin to blur the boundary between art and reality.

A Moment of Silence, translated into English by Yaghoubi and Torange Yeghiazarian, is highly acclaimed in Iran and internationally, having also been translated into French, Czech, Turkish and Kurdish. It has been hailed as the best play to emerge from Iran since the 1979 Revolution and widely acclaimed for the playwright’s layered and imaginative approach to realism. The play has been recognized by the New Play Contest of the Toronto Fringe Festival, the Playwrights’ Society of Iran Award for Outstanding Play, the Iranian National Theatre Critics Society Award for Outstanding Direction, and the International Theatre Festival of Iran Award for Outstanding Direction. 

Presented internationally and in other parts of the U.S., the Princeton production is the first in this region of the country.

Directed by Nikoo Mamdoohi, an Iranian theater director based in Washington, DC; with dramaturgy by Q-mars Haeri, postdoctoral research associate in Princeton’s Sharmin and Bijan Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Iran and Persian Gulf Studies; and Iranian designers Omid Akbari (set) and Afsaneh Aayani (costumes).

Also supported by Princeton’s Program for Community-Engaged Scholarship (ProCES) and Sharmin and Bijan Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Iran and Persian Gulf Studies.

Berlind Theatre is an accessible venue with wheelchair and companion seating available. The November 7 performance will be open/live captioned (CART). An assistive listening system is available and headphones can be requested from ushers. Visit our Venues and Studios section for accessibility information at our various locations, including Berlind Theatre. Attendees in need of other access accommodations are invited to contact the Lewis Center at 609-258-5262 or email LewisCenter@princeton.edu at least one week in advance of the event date

Additional Programming
A range of enriching programming around A Moment of Silence is planned, with more coming soon!

Classroom Interactions
The artists and scholars of the project will also interact with Princeton students and local high school students. Director Nikoo Mamdoohi, set designer Omid Akbari and costume designer Afsaneh Aayaneh will share a design presentation for multiple Princeton classes and visit the “Theatrical Design Studio” course; dramaturg Q-Mars Haeri will be a guest in the “Global Plays and Politics” course, as will Akbari and Aayaneh, and Mamdoohi; and translator Torange Yeghiazarian will visit with the cast and production team of the production through the course, “Theater Rehearsal and Performance.” In addition Aayaneh and Akbari will visit students at Trenton Central High School and will present a theatrical design workshop for Trenton middle and high school students who are part of the Trenton Youth Theater program of Trenton Arts at Princeton. Mamdoohi and Haeri will present a performance and dramaturgy workshop for high school students in collaboration Trenton Central High School, Princeton University Preparatory Program (PUPP), and the Lydia’s Scholars Program. Local high school students will also attend a post-matinee conversation.