Full casting has been announced for the Gate theatre’s UK premiere of Sanaz Toossi’s Wish You Were Here, which opens at Theatro Technis @ 26 Crowndale on Thursday 24 October to Saturday 23 November with press night on Tuesday 29 October.
Sepy Baghaei will direct a stellar cast featuring Afsaneh Dehrouyeh (Yellow/BBC’s Granite Harbour) Maryam Grace (Macbeth/The Postcard Killings), Juliette Motamed (C4’s We are Lady Parts/Magic Mike’s Last Dance), Isabella Nefar (My English Persian Kitchen/Small City) and Emily Renée (Amazon Prime’s The Power/Honesty) in Pulitzer prize-winning playwright Toossi’s funny and astute drama which vividly explores female friendships and how life can impact them, as they live their lives against a backdrop of marriages and revolution.
Five friends, three weddings and unabashed humour. Amongst conversations on unibrows, depilation, forbidden music and shared wax strips, five Iranian women exchange dreams whilst planning their future lives. Playful, intimate and surprisingly naughty, these girlfriends are completely unfiltered behind closed doors.
Set against simmering political tensions of Iran over 14 years, Sanaz Toossi’s dazzling play piquantly evokes a living room alive with humour, sexual precocity and real female friendship as it charts a decade of sisterhood and platonic love with raw honesty and outrageous humour.
Sanaz Toossi is a Pulitzer Prize winning Iranian American playwright from Orange County, California. Her plays include the critically acclaimed, award-winning English, which was staged at the RSC and Kiln. She is currently under commission at Atlantic Theater Company (Launch commission; Virginia B. Toulmin Foundation grant), Roundabout Theatre Company, Williamstown Theatre Festival, Manhattan Theatre Club, South Coast Repertory, and Oregon Shakespeare Festival (American Revolutions Cycle). In television, Sanaz recently staffed on Invitation to a Bonfire (AMC), A League of their Own (Amazon); Five Women (Marielle Heller/ Big Beach); and sold an original idea, The Persians, to FX with Joe Weisberg & Joel Fields attached as Executive Producers. Sanaz is a member of Youngblood and the Middle Eastern American Writers Lab at the Lark, and an alum of Clubbed Thumb’s Early Career Writers’ Group. She was the 2019 P73 Playwriting Fellow, a recipient of the 2020 Steinberg Playwright Award, and the 2022 recipient of The Horton Foote Award. MFA: NYU Tisch.
Sepy Baghaei is an Iranian-Australian theatre director who works primarily with new writing. She trained at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, the Australian Academy of Dramatic Art, and on the National Theatre Directors Course. Selected credits as director include: I Am Lysistrata (Makani/Park Theatre); The Good Iranian (Rug Entertainment); Habibti Driver (Octagon Theatre); Sokhan Begoo (Royal Court); Little Women, Citizen, Wilde Tales (The Space); and Grimm Tales (City of Sydney Library). As associate/assistant director: The Boy With Two Hearts (National Theatre/Wales Millennium Centre); Manor (National Theatre); Once Upon a Time in Nazi Occupied Tunisia (Almeida Theatre); Welcome To Iran (BBC Radio 3/Theatre Royal Stratford East/National Theatre); Reasons To Stay Alive (Sheffield Theatres/English Touring Theatre); Othello (English Touring Theatre); and As You Like It (Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre).
The running time is approx. 105 mins (no interval)
The work of the Gate is generously supported by Backstage Trust and Bloomberg Philanthropies.
As previously announced the cast will also be performing three short playlets by writers Jasmin Mandi-Ghomi, Afsaneh Gray and Melina Namdar. Each writer has been commissioned to write a 5–10 minute playlet responding to the theatre’s mission statement of telling stories beyond borders and these will run on Friday 8, 15 and 22 November following the performance.
The Gate will also be working with three other arts organisations to offer evenings of music and art on Sundays throughout the run of Wish You Were Here. Gateways is a series of talks, commissions and curated events that will offer audiences opportunities to learn more about the theatre’s work, its artists and how the work relates to the wider world.
Get your tickets here: https://www.gatetheatre.co.uk/gateways-wish-you-were-here/
WRITTEN BY: NURA AROOJ
