A theater in Iran, two actresses, and the daring idea of portraying a lesbian love story: Here in the land of the mullahs, everyone knows what they’re risking. But they can’t do anything else.
A quick cup of tea before rehearsing the play in which two women will become intimate: two wrestlers training. Two young women with loose hair, trying out what it’s like to kiss on stage. It’s eleven o’clock in the morning on the second floor of an apartment building in Tehran, the capital of the Islamic Republic.
That much is clear. But not much more, for example, whether what they’re planning is normal, risky, or completely crazy. And perhaps the confusion begins with the calendar: in most of the world, it’s February 2025; in Iran, where they use the Persian calendar, they write the year 1403. But if you ask the director or the two actresses, a new era began in Iran in the autumn of two years ago. According to this calculation, they’re currently writing the year three after Mahsa.
It’s the third year since the death of Jina Mahsa Amini, the young woman who died after being arrested by the morality police for allegedly improperly wearing the hijab, the headscarf. The largest and longest protests the Iranian regime has ever seen followed. But the regime remains, and so do its prison cells.
Continue reading at: https://www.bazonline.ch/iran-theaterstueck-zeigt-lesbische-liebe-in-teheran-326691217881 (Source)
Listening to Lesbians 