To Love or Not to Love puts a modern spin on a medieval Persian epic, August 27 to 30
Majid Tafreshi’s play intertwines Nezami Ganjavi’s 12th-century poetry with the lives of contemporary theatre actors
To Love or Not to Love. Photo by Modi Hosseini
TAFF Art Society and VIVA Alliance present To Love or Not to Love at the Annex from August 27 to 30
SOMETIMES THE OLDEST stories can tell us the most about the way we live today. When writing his play To Love or Not to Love, Majid Tafreshi drew inspiration from Khosrow and Shirin, a romantic epic by 12th-century Persian poet Nezami Ganjavi.
Ganjavi’s poem tells of the love triangle between Khosrow II, monarch of the Sasanian Empire; the Armenian princess Shirin; and a sculptor named Farhad. Tafreshi set the play not in pre-Islamic Iran, however, but in a contemporary rehearsal studio, where a group of actors is preparing to stage the ancient love story, only to have their own interpersonal relationships and unresolved desires complicate things.
In addition to directing To Love or Not to Love in its run at the Annex, Tafreshi also performs as one of the play-within-a-play’s actors, alongside Nikta Ghazi, Steve Amazzal, Navid Charkhi, Sara Poursorkh.
On the website of his production company, TAFF Arts Society, Tafreshi writes:
I was drawn back to the ancient story of Khosrow and Shirin while searching for a way to speak about the world we live in today. Surrounded by conflict, displacement, and uncertainty, I found myself asking whether love is still enough to hold us together—or whether it has become another role we struggle to perform. An absurd play-within-a-play became the natural form for this question, where myth and reality, actors and characters, truth and performance continually blur. I don’t offer an answer. I simply invite the audience into the question.
To Love or Not to Love is described as a "half-musical", with original music by Parisa Torabi, also known as Madmazel. 
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