Gholamhoseyn Sa'edi, Othello in Wonderland

Shauna O'Brien (Trinity College Dublin)

Ed. by William M. Hamlin, Washington State University
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 7.1.1: Iranian/ Persian Writing and Culture.
Vol. editors: Laetitia Nanquette (University of New South Wales)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1985

Places

Iran (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Play

Resources

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Othello in Wonderland

is one of the last plays written by the Iranian playwright, novelist and screenwriter Gholamhoseyn Sa’edi before his death in 1985. Written in Farsi during Sa’edi’s exile in France and first staged in Paris in 1985, the play presents the story of an amateur theatre troupe as they attempt to stage Shakespeare’s

Othello

in Iran of the early 1980s under the scrutiny of the state censor.

The troupe’s endeavour to produce Othello acts as a case study that illustrates and interrogates the methods of theatrical censorship in post-revolutionary Iran. Sa’edi uses Shakespeare’s status as a figure of “enlightened humanism” to counterpoint the conservative ideology of the state censors, whose hostility towards the production becomes a signifier of the political

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1226 words

Citation: O'Brien, Shauna. "Othello in Wonderland". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 10 November 2014 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=35254, accessed 18 April 2024.]

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