Roland Topor’s “Tenant” coming to Tehran theater

Iranian director Setareh Aminian plans to stage an adaptation of French writer Roland Topor’s novel “The Tenant” in Tehran next week, AVA Diplomatic reports.

French Ambassador Francois Senemaud is scheduled to open the play at Hafez Hall on July 11.

Aminian will stage the play in collaboration with Réformances, a Paris-based company that was founded by Iranian choreographer and director Afshin Ghaffarian in 2010.

Ghaffarian is also in the cast, which also includes Morteza Esmaeil-Kashi, Sara Olya, Mona Sharifi, Samira Toluei, Borna Etemadi, Saeid Oveisi and Rahim Noruzi.

Aminian who is also the writer of the play had flashes of inspiration from Russian author Fyodor Dostoevsky’s novella “Notes from Underground” to pen the drama.

“The Tenant” chronicles a harrowing, fascinating descent into madness as the pathologically alienated Trelkovsky is subsumed into Simone Choule, an enigmatic suicide whose presence saturates his new apartment.

“‘The Tenant’ has many charters, but none of them is the protagonist of the story. The hero is the situation that prepares the ground for the characters to be born,” Aminian said.