Ardaviraf's Report: A Play Reading by Bahram Beyzaie

This is an Archive of a Past Event

Ardaviraf's Report
Ardaviraf is inspired by Zoroastrian text that many consider to be one of the earliest renditions of journey to the other world that was canonically later captured in Dante’s Divine Comedy. In Beyzaie’s adaptation of the ancient Persian text Ardaviraf travels to paradise, purgatory and inferno where he meets the pantheon of characters from Persian history and mythology.

The Play is a brilliant poetic dramatization of tales from the other world. A reckoning with Persian mytho - history at the hands of a master playwright.

Bahram Beyzaie is one of Iran's most acclaimed filmmakers, playwrights, and scholars of the history of Iranian theater, both secular and religious. He was a leader of the generation of filmmakers’ known as the Iranian New Wave, beginning in the late 1960s, and has since directed more than a dozen prize-winning films. He has also conducted pioneering research into the roots of ancient legends derived from Indo-Iranian mythology and known collectively as A Thousand and One Nights. He is that rare artist who is also an erudite critic and scholar of his myriad crafts. Beyzaie lives and works in Iran, but is spending time at Stanford as the Bita Daryabari Visiting Lecturer of Persian Studies.