TEHRAN – A group of actors will perform a reading of Russian writer Anton Chekhov’s 1895 play “The Seagull” at Tehran’s Hilaj Theater Complex on Sunday.Hamidreza Danaifard will be the producer and the director of the reading performance, which will be read by a cast composed of Farzad dashti, Hossein Ahmadi, Parvaneh Tavasoli, Milad Ghafuri, and Vahid Firuzi.In “The Seagull”, the main characters, all artists, are guests at a country estate.

They are Mme Arkadina, a middle-aged actress; her lover, Trigorin, a successful writer; her son Konstantin, a writer; and Nina, a young aspiring actress whom Konstantin loves.Mme Arkadina, jealous of Nina’s youth and promising career, acts cruelly and hatefully toward Konstantin, belittling his new play and withholding the approval he desperately seeks from her.Nina, impressed by Trigorin’s fame, ignores Konstantin, who kills a seagull and shows it to her, perhaps symbolically referring to his broken dreams.

All four go their separate ways, but two years later they are reunited at the same estate.

When Nina again rejects Konstantin, he destroys his writings and shoots himself while his mother, unaware, plays cards in another room.“The Seagull” is generally considered to be the first of Chekhov’s four major plays.Photo: Front cover of the Persian edition of Anton Chekhov’s play “The Seagull”.ABU/MG