Moonlight Drips

In 2019, we had no public space for rehearsals or performances. We didn’t want to involve anyone outside our group—everyone working with us knew exactly what they were risking. So we met in the four walls of our homes, planning, rehearsing, dreaming up the next project.

Shirin adapted The Teachers, a play by Mohsen Yalfani, originally staged in 1970 by Saeed Soltanpour and the Iranian Theater Association. That production was swiftly shut down, and both the playwright and director were imprisoned. In Shirin’s version, time blurred—you could see the 1970s, but you could feel 2019. Teachers were organizing, their protests gaining strength across the country.

We decided to film The Teachers inside our home. For three months, we rehearsed in our living room, and when the time came, we put up plasterboards, transforming the space into a makeshift television studio for a tele-theater production.

My mother, who lived with us, had suffered a stroke a few years earlier. She could no longer walk unassisted and spent most of the day lying in her room. But she had always been a fierce, passionate woman, and the presence of actors, the voices, the movement—it brought her to life.

I had given her a copy of the script so she could follow along, to feel part of it. She struggled to read, but she pretended it was easy. Years earlier, she had been one of the first members of the Exit theater group in Iran, rehearsing in this very house with Shirin and the others. Now, she didn’t want anyone to see her in her weakened state. Whenever we checked on her during breaks, she would wave us away, saying, "Don’t worry about me—go back to work."

Then, the day of filming arrived. My mother listened in silence from her room.

I stepped inside.
"Are you alright?" I asked.
"Yes, my dear, I’m fine. How’s the work going? Are the kids doing well?" she said.

The next scene was about to begin. The male actor entered the house, placed an old vinyl record on the gramophone, and as the voice of Ahmad Shamlou filled the room, he whispered along with the poetry of Nima Yooshij:

"The moonlight drips
The night-glow shines
No one stirs from sleep, yet
The sorrow of these few dreamers
Breaks within my tearful eyes…"

The female actress (his wife) appeared in the doorway.
Together, they continued, their voices merging with Shamlou’s:

"The dawn stands beside me, watching with worry.
It asks of me—
That with its blessed breath,
I may bring news to these soul-weary people..."

And then—

From the next room, my mother’s voice rose.

Soft, trembling, yet certain:

"O delicate-bodied rose,
Which I nurtured with my soul,
And watered with my life—
Alas!
Now it breaks in my arms..."

We froze.

Her voice, fragile yet full of something deeper than memory, filled the space.

No one spoke. No one could.

Our throats tightened.

—Cut.