Horses from Heaven fall in a rain of ash
By Naghmeh Samini | Translated by Jack Paterson
With British Equity WSW London (London UK)
October 2019
Horses from Heaven fall in a rain of ash (Iran)
By Naghmeh Samini | Translated by Jack Paterson
Special thank you to artists Rosie Akerman, Kavé Niku, Jay Ramji and Saria Steel, and Lola May for organizing this opportunity.
Prince Siyâvash, the symbol of innocence in Persian literature, is ordered by his father to ride into a burning pyre for a crime he did not commit. In the flames, he encounters those who confront his future actions and his current beliefs. Inspired and drawn from the Shahnameh (The Book of Kings), and South Asian, Chinese and Western mythologies.
October 2019, Bouche was kindly invited by the British Equity London Office to lead some new play development activities. Bouche leapt at this this opportunity to introduce British artists to International work.
About the playwright
Naghmeh Samini
Naghmem Samini (Ph.D), playwright, scriptwriter and lecturer in Dramatic Arts, was born in Iran and received her BA in Drama and MA in Cinema from the University of Tehran. She did her PhD in Art Studies at the University of Tarbiat Modarres (Tehran) with a thesis focused on Drama and Mythology. Her plays have been staged in Iran, France, India, Canada, the United States and other countries. Her plays are experimental in structure and handle a variety of topical subjects at personal and sociopolitical levels. Her play The King and the Mathematician: A Legend(2012) was selected by UNESCO as one of the cultural achievements of the year.
About the translator
Jack Paterson
Launching from Vancouver, Jack is an award-winning divisor, director, dramaturge, translator, actor and creative producer whose work and practice have taken him across North America, the UK and around the world. Productions have ranged from contemporary devising, cross-cultural and multi-disciplinary projects to main stage and classical theatre in contemporary form.
He is the founder of Vancouver’s award-winning Mad Duck Theatre Collective for whom he adapted and directed Julius Caesar, Vancouver’s first female Prospero in The Tempest and the Vancouver premieres of Titus Andronicus and Shakespeare’s R&J. In 2012 he founded, BoucheWHACKED! Theatre Collective dedicated to shared practiced exchange between francophone and anglophone Canadian practitioners. He is the co-founder of Global Hive Labs, a network of international artists and organizations working in shared practice.
Shows under his direction have garnered over twenty-five Jessie award nominations with many wins. He is a recipient of “The Ray Michal Award”, “The Cole Foundation Award for Emerging Translators” and “The John Moffat & Larry Lillo Award for Outstanding West Coast Artist”.
Jack trained at Circle in Square (NYC, USA), GITIS The University of Performing Arts (Moscow, RU), The Indonesian Institute of the Performing Arts (Denpasar, IND) and received his MFA in Theatre Direction from the renowned East 15 Acting School (London, UK).
About our partner
British Equity
WSW London Branch
The West and South West London Branch of Equity UK. Equity is the UK trade union for professional performers and creative practitioners.