The Invention of Paradise

Amir Gudarzi

Play based on "The Persians" by Aeschylus

Synopsis

What and where is paradise? Is it a real place to which we must gain access, or do we have to find it in ourselves? The Persian king Xerxes wants to cultivate and protect his kingdom like a paradisiacal garden. But he perceives Greece as a threat to all that he inherited from his parents, Darius and Atossa. War ensues. More than 2000 years ago, the Greek poet Aeschylus described divisions that are at the centre of global politics today. Who is the aggressor? The European West or the Persian East?

The Austro-Iranian writer Amir Gudarzi adapts the tragedy “The Persians” by Aeschylus, examining the so-called “Persian Wars” both from a contemporary perspective and in light of documented historical findings. In “The Persians”, Aeschylus tells the story of the defeat of King Xerxes by the Greek army in the Battle of Salamis in 480 B.C. from a Persian point of view. But how would the Persians themselves really describe the events?

Just like Aeschylus, Amir Gudarzi addresses these questions using the theatre’s potential to tell a story from different perspectives. Gudarzi thus shows that even one of the earliest surviving works on the topic examines the stereotypes associated with the Orient and the Occident from various perspectives – and that the ability to change one’s perspective contains the possibility of reconciliation.

Amir Gudarzi, born in Teheran in 1986, attended what was then the only theatre school in Iran and subsequently studied scenic writing. He has been living and working in Vienna since 2009. He has received various grants and sponsorships for his work as a playwright and has won several awards, including the 2022 Kleist-Förderpreis for his play “Wonderwomb”.

Nuran David Calis perceives the theatre as a place of intercultural research and universal compassion. This was his motivation to add “The Persians” to the season programme and to ask Amir Gudarzi for a modern adaptation.