About Prisoner of Tehran ~ the Play

What would you give up to protect your loved ones? Your life?

Following the meteoric success of Marina Nemat’s memoir, Contrary Company is thrilled to be developing the play Prisoner Of Tehran.

This stunning theatrical adaptation by Dora award winning writer and director Maja Ardal is told through a series of flashbacks and snatches of Nemat’s beloved poetry.

Prisoner of Tehran journeys through the imagination of Marina, and stretches the
boundaries of theatrical realism. It is intended as a journey of the heart with three actors moving back and forth through time, place and character. The cruel subjugation of this young woman is expressed through heightened language, music and the power of theatrical suggestion. Created by an award winning team of artists that include set designer Julia Tribe, sound designer Lyon Smith, director Ardal, and actors Bahareh Yaraghi, Keon Mohajeri, and Mirian Katrib with the participation of Marina Nemat, Prisoner Of Tehran promises to be an exciting, innovative new work.

Prisoner of Tehran ~ A Memoir

In her heartbreaking, triumphant, and elegantly written memoir, Prisoner of Tehran, Marina Nemat tells the heart-pounding story of her life as a young girl in Iran during the early days of Ayatollah Khomeini's brutal Islamic Revolution.

In January 1982, Marina Nemat, then just sixteen years old, was arrested, tortured,
and sentenced to death for political crimes. Until then, her life in Tehran had centered around school, summer parties at the lake, and her crush on Andre, the young man she had met at church. But when math and history were subordinated to the study of the Koran and political propaganda, Marina protested. Her teacher replied, "If you don't like it, leave." She did, and, to her surprise, other students followed. Soon she was arrested with hundreds of other youths who had dared to speak out, and they were taken to the notorious Evin prison in Tehran. Two guards interrogated her. One beat her into unconsciousness; the other, Ali, fell in love with her.

Sentenced to death for refusing to give up the names of her friends, she was minutes from being executed when Ali, using his family connections to Ayatollah Khomeini, plucked her from the firing squad and had her sentence reduced to life in prison. But he exacted a shocking price for saving her life -- with a dizzying combination of terror and tenderness, he asked her to marry him and abandon her Christian faith for Islam. If she didn't, he would see to it that her family was harmed. She spent the next two years as a prisoner of the state, and of the man who held her life, and her family's lives, in his hands.

Lyrical, passionate, and suffused throughout with grace and sensitivity, Marina Nemat's memoir is like no other. Her search for emotional redemption envelops her jailers, her husband and his family, and the country of her birth -- each of whom she grants the greatest gift of all: forgiveness. (from simonandshuster.com)

Prisoner of Tehran is a gripping personal history…
important and chillingly universal…

–New York Times

…Gripping, elegantly written memoir…masterly…

–The Wall Street Journal

…Prisoner of Tehran is an extraordinary story of survival and how one woman finally
found inner peace through the written word.

–Entertainment Weekly

This powerful memoir examines Nemat’s struggle to forgive those who beat her and
sentenced her to death at 16 for speaking against her government.

– Newsweek

“Nemat offers her arresting, heartbreaking story of forgiveness, hope and enduring
love—a voice for the untold scores silenced by Iran's revolution.”

–Publishers’ Weekly (starred review)

…the story of her journey to freedom is extraordinary…Nemat believes it is important
to make history personal…Nemat’s story is a complex mixture of light and darkness, love and violence -- of human paradoxes that defy simplistic labels of good and evil.

–Leigh Anne Williams, Quill and Quire

The development of the play
Prisoner of Tehran
supported to-date by:

Television

CBC News: Our World - Part 1

CBC News: Our World - Part 2

CBC News: Our World - Part 3

PBS - Tavis Smiley

VOA Persian Interview (August 14, 2009)

Radio

The Drew Marshall Show (09/19/09)

NPR.org

BBC

TVO's Big Ideas

Medianext.com - KCBS

WritersCafe.ca