Blue Light Theatre Group presents Hamletak, a new Persian musical adaptation of William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Centennial Theatre, Sunday, Feb. 18, 6:30 p.m. Tickets $40/$30/$25. In Farsi, with a scene-by-scene breakdown into English provided in brochure.
The Blue Light Theatre Group will take Shakespeare’s Hamlet into new territory on Sunday night.
In Hamletak (Little Hamlet) the North Vancouver theatrical ensemble is faithful to The Bard’s original theme but presents the story in a traditional Persian performance style known as Takht–e–Hozi, combining drama, poetry and music in one production.
“Poetry is the language of emotion and it is one of the major foundations of literary works in Farsi,” says Zhoobin Ghaziani, founder of the group and director of Hamletak. “Shakespeare uses the same poetic language in his major plays, such as Hamlet, and the similarities made me choose Takht-e-Hozi for the adaptation.”
Born in Tehran in 1975, Ghaziani was raised in Shiraz and went to university in Arak, in central Iran. He has a Bachelor of Arts degree in Theatre Acting and a Masters in Directing Theatre. He also studied at Amin Tarokh’s Cinema Acting Institute.
Ghaziani established the Blue Light Theatre Group on the North Shore in February of 2017, naming it after a similar ensemble that he started in Iran two decades ago.
Auditions for the group were held and artists with many different abilities and interests responded. Ghaziani’s theatre academy meets weekly every Saturday night for classes in theory, psychology of performance plus exercises in movement, body and speech at his Sound Camera Action Studio in North Vancouver.
The group collectively decided to perform a play together and Hamletak is the result of those efforts.
There will be a total of 16 actors on stage at Centennial Theatre as well as three singers and three musicians.
“Some of the cast have previous acting experience in Persian plays,” says Ghaziani. “But others are performing for the first time and Hamletak is their first stage experience.”
The cast includes Arash Azad, Kasra Azad, Asad Beigi, Lia Fallah, Atia Gapele, Mahsa Gharagozloo, Zhoobin Ghaziani, Iman Karbalaeian, Ashraf Mirnezami, Hamid Mohammadian, Elnaz Rezaei, Soheila Salimi, Sanam Salimi Elizei, Sepideh Samiee, Mohammadzia Yazdani, Fardin Zahedi and Mansur Firuzbakhsh.
Ofogh Iraji wrote the adaptation and Parvin Sarabadani produced the production. Alborz Rahmani composed music and performs on the tar with Sina Etehad playing the kamancheh and Naeim Charkhi accompanying on percussion. Three vocalists (Navid Gamini, Atefeh Jahanbin and Sara Jabari) will also be part of the stage show.
For more information visit on Hamletak visit scastudio.ca/theater-project.
