A Dress for Mona (The Drama Circle, March 28-April 6 in the Durham Arts Council’s PSI Theatre, 120 Morris St., Durham, NC) is the world premiere of the published version of Triangle playwright Mark Perry’s harrowing script about Islamic fundamentalists’ fierce persecution of the title character, Mona Mahmudnizhad, a 16-year-old of the Bahá’í faith.
According to preshow publicity, “A Dress for Mona is a full-length drama based on the true story of one girl’s awe-inspiring courage in the face of religious fundamentalism, imprisonment, and execution. In 1982, with fanaticism running rampant in the streets of Iran, 16-year-old Mona, as a Bahá’í, is a member of Iran’s most despised religious minority. One night she dreams of three dresses, each representing a different direction her life might take. In her dream and in her waking life, the choices Mona makes in extraordinary and increasingly violent circumstances determine the ultimate triumph and sacrifice of her life.”
Dramatist Mark Perry, a graduate of the University of Iowa’s Playwrights Workshop and author of 10 plays, will direct this tense story, which The Midwest Book Review called an “Absorbing, thought-provoking… emotionally wrenching drama… in many ways a modern-day mirror of the fanaticism portrayed in another great classic, The Crucible.”
For more information, visit http://www.dramacircle.org/*, http://66.216.4.122/play.htm*, and http://www.adressformona.org/*. For tickets, order online at http://www.etix.com/ticket/online/index.html.