Présentation de la pièce Les Vieilles Filles d’Ali Shams

In partnership with editions L’Espace d’un instant.

With Jonathan Châtel (stage director and professor of theater studies at the University of Louvain), Quentin Fondu (sociologist of theater), and Fahimeh Najmi (researcher and translator).

The event will be enriched by reading excerpts from the play by Jando Graziani, Raffaelli Holguin, Murat Isikveren, and Prisca Randimbivololona.

About the play Les Vieilles Filles:

"The actions carried out following instructions recorded on audio cassettes constitute the bulk of the special birthday celebration day during which the old maids, all sisters, isolated and with no real contact with the living world, idolize their father who died years ago. But at night, it is an entirely different story. In Les Vieilles Filles, which takes the form of a seemingly simple linear story – yet impossible to publish even underground in Iran under current conditions –, Ali Shams offers an allegory of his country today by describing a frozen, paralyzed, and grotesque situation in which the inhabitants find themselves trapped."

The play was translated from Persian by Fahimeh Najmi with a preface by Jonathan Châtel.

Ali Shams was born in 1985 in Arak (Iran); he is the author of more than fifteen plays, most of which he directed. In 2024, he was banned from leaving Iranian territory for two years. Since then, Ali Shams has opened the Shams Theater House in a working-class neighborhood of Tehran.