TEHRAN – Iranshahr Theater will host the play “In the Burning Darkness” by the Spanish playwright Antonio Buero Vallejo from June 28.
Houshmand Honarkar has directed the play, which has Nahid Moslemi, Kazem Hazhirazad, Siavash Khadem Hosseini, Parisa Sharifi, Sarina Soltanlou, and Mahyar Mirzaei in the cast, among others, Mehr reported.
A play in three acts, “In the Burning Darkness” was written in 1947. The story centers on the unfortunate Ignacio, blind from birth, who is forced to enter an institution for the blind, run by Don Pablo. There he encounters a group of seemingly happy blind people, whom he nevertheless infects with his sense of misery at the loss of the most wonderful of senses.
Despite the attempts of Carlos, one of the students at the institute, who is suspicious of the friendship between Ignacio and his girlfriend Juana, Ignacio refuses to leave the institution. One fateful day, Carlos murders Ignacio on the playground swings. It seems that the blind can finally be happy again; however, Carlos’s last words lead us to believe that Ignacio’s influence has changed his way of thinking forever.
In “In the Burning Darkness,” Buero represents the stark confrontation with a reality that cannot be hidden or disguised. Through the physical affliction of blindness, he symbolizes human limitations. Thus, he is a symbol of imperfection, of the lack of freedom to understand the mystery of our being and our destiny in the world. Man is not free because he cannot know the mystery that surrounds him.
The play has been interpreted by some critics as an allegory, with the blindness of the students seen as a metaphor for the Spanish people’s “blindness” in their passive acceptance of the Francoist State. The role of Carlos in the play is analogous to that of Franco: like the caudillo, Carlos convinces the blind students into believing they are happy with their current state. Carlos also murders the resistance (i.e., Ignacio), much as Franco ordered the assassination of republican resistance leaders.
Antonio Buero Vallejo (1916 – 2000) was the winner of the Lope de Vega Prize in 1949 and the Cervantes Prize in 1986.
He is considered to be the best playwright of the 20th century. His plays continue to be represented in theaters all over the world, and even some schools stage his plays.
Buero was the most important Spanish dramatist of the post-Civil War period. In his long career as a playwright, he published thirty original plays.
The common theme that links all his work is the tragedy of the individual, analyzed from a social, ethical, and moral perspective. The main problems that afflict humankind are already present in his first work, “In the Burning Darkness,” and continue in later works. Critics have classified his work into symbolist theater, social criticism theater, and historical dramas.
“In the Burning Darkness” will remain on stage through July 30 at Iranshahr Theater, located at the Artists Park, North Mousavi Street, Taleqani Street.
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