TEHRAN – The one-act play “The Zoo Story” by American playwright Edward Albee will be staged at the Qashqai Hall of Tehran’s City Theater Complex from July 9.

Directed by Khosrow Khorshidi, the play has Masoud Sakhaei and Masoud Mirhosseini in the cast, Honaronline reported.

Written in 1958 and completed in just three weeks, “The Zoo Story” explores themes of isolation, loneliness, miscommunication as anathematization, social disparity, and dehumanization in a materialistic world. 

The play concerns two characters, Peter and Jerry, who meet on a park bench in New York City’s Central Park. Peter is a wealthy publishing executive with a wife, two daughters, two cats, and two parakeets. Jerry is an isolated and disheartened man, desperate to have a meaningful conversation with another human being. He intrudes on Peter’s peaceful state by interrogating him and forcing him to listen to stories about his life and the reason behind his visit to the zoo. 

The elements of ironic humor and unrelenting dramatic suspense are brought to a climax when Jerry brings his victim down to his own savage level.

Eventually, Peter has had enough of his strange companion and tries to leave. Jerry begins pushing Peter off the bench and challenges him to fight for his territory. Unexpectedly, Jerry pulls a knife on Peter, and then drops it as if inviting Peter to grab it. When Peter holds the knife defensively, Jerry charges him and impales himself on the knife.

Albee uses his spokesman character to relay the importance of communication, since throughout the play, Jerry tries to establish contact with Peter by telling him stories. If Jerry can make his stories “real” to Peter or members of the audience, then Jerry can escape his feelings of loneliness and isolation. Albee ultimately uses the shock of the violence at the play’s conclusion to “instill in his audience the idealistically American call to action to change the world for the better.”

Edward Albee (1928-2016) was an American dramatist and theatrical producer best known for his play “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” (1962), which displays slashing insight and witty dialogue in its gruesome portrayal of married life.

Among Albee’s early one-act plays, “The Zoo Story” (1959), “The Sandbox” (1959), and “The American Dream” (1961) were the most successful and established him as an astute critic of American values. But it is his first full-length play, “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”, that remains his most important work. In this play, a middle-aged professor, his wife, and a younger couple engage one night in an unrestrained drinking bout that is filled with malicious games, insults, humiliations, betrayals, savage witticisms, and painful, self-revealing confrontations. The play won immediate acclaim and established Albee as a major American playwright.

In addition to writing, Albee produced a number of plays and lectured at schools throughout the country. He was awarded the National Medal of Arts in 1996. A compilation of his essays and personal anecdotes, “Stretching My Mind,” was published in 2005. That year, Albee also received a Tony Award for lifetime achievement.

“The Zoo Story” will remain on stage till August 6 at the City Theater, located in Daneshjoo Park, at the intersection of Valiasr and Enghelab streets.

SS/SAB