TEHRAN – Book Garden Theater & Music Hall in Tehran will host the performance of the 2005 play “Blackbird” written by the Scottish playwright David Harrower from May 20.

Navid Mohammadzadeh has directed the play and also performs in it along with Maryam Hosseini, Mehr reported.

The play was inspired in part by the crimes of Toby Studebaker, and depicts a young woman meeting a middle-aged man fifteen years after being abused by him when she was twelve.

At his workplace, 55-year-old Ray Brooks is shocked to be visited by a young woman, 27-year-old Una Spencer. Fifteen years earlier, Ray had sexually assaulted Una for three months when Una was twelve and Ray was forty; subsequently, Ray had been jailed for three years for statutory rape.

Ultimately, they ran off together, and, while Ray was taking time to compose himself after realizing what he had just done, he left her alone in a motel room. She got worried and left to find him, which led to both of them frantically searching for one another and raising suspicions within the small coastal town where they were staying. 

Eventually, a couple out walking their dog took Una in and called the police after learning why she was there. Ray was then arrested and imprisoned. Upon his release, he managed to establish a reasonably successful new life under another name, but Una recognized him in a photograph and tracked him down.

Ray takes Una to the office break room, where the two engage in a long and difficult confrontation involving Una's continuing struggles to understand and come to terms with the abuse and her intensely conflicting emotions, which pivot between anger, curiosity, confusion, and even a persistent attachment to Ray, whom Una loved – and she believed that he loved her. 

The fearful Ray, who is himself trying to forget the past and the potential feelings he had for Una, parries her demanding questions and descriptions of her feelings and experiences, all the while uncertain of her intentions.

Since 2005, the play has been performed at various venues across the world. A film adaptation of the play titled “Una” premiered in September 2016 at the 43rd Telluride Film Festival. It stars Rooney Mara as Una and Ben Mendelsohn as Ray.

David Harrower, 60, has published over 10 original works, as well as numerous translations and adaptations.

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