A twelve-member cast enacts Scheherazade's tales of love, lust, comedy, and dreams. Scheherazade's cliffhanger stories prevent her husband, the cruel ruler Shahryar, from murdering her, and after 1,001 nights, Shahryar is cured of his madness, and Scheherazade returns to her family. This adaptation offers a wonderful blend of the lesser-known tales from Arabian Nights with the recurring theme of how the magic of storytelling holds the power to change people. The final scene brings the audience back to a modern day Baghdad with the wail of air raid sirens threatening the rich culture and history that are embodied by these tales.
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"If you want theatre at its most unpretentiously poetic, most fetchingly stylish, as humane as it is elegant, I commend to you The Arabian Nights." --New York Magazine
"There's a saying that nobody can read the entire Arabian Nights without dying of pleasure. In Zimmernan's production, that seems a possibility." --USA Today
"[A] feast for the eyes and ears." --Chicago Magazine
About the Author
Mary Zimmerman is a professor of performance studies at Northwestern University. In 1998, she was the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, and in 2002, she won the Tony Award for Best Director. She has adapted-directed Metamorphoses, The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci, The Odyssey, The Arabian Nights, Eleven Rooms of Proust, and Journey to the West. Mostly recently she directed and wrote the libretto for Galileo Galilee, the new opera by Philip Glass, which premiered at the Goodman Theatre.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
26 of 26 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
An excellent piece for educational theatre,
By Mark Webber (Malaysia) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Arabian Nights: A Play (Paperback)
I am a theatre teacher and have read several (read around 100) plays looking for a play that 1)has several significant female roles, 2) has literary merit, 3)has a story with some heart 4)has humor and 5)will stretch my actors in ways they have not worked before. Mary Zimmerman's THE ARABIAN NIGHTS has all that and more. It really is a fantastic piece built around the tale of The Arabian Nights but using stories that are not overtold. Every time I read this script I discover more and more to it. Although it has some clever notes from the original production of this play, there is PLENTY of room for new creation including an improvisational idea for a portion of the script and an allusion to modern day Iraq at the end of the play. I hope we are able to secure the rights to do this show because I am looking forward to directing this play with my students. Even if you don't produce the play, it is well worth reading.
2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Arabian Nights by Mary Zimmerman,
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This review is from: The Arabian Nights: A Play (Paperback)
Mary Zimmerman is the writer and director of the stage play The Arabian Nights: A Play. Her creative technique is to deeply research a subject, often ancient writings or even drawings, and then to work collaboratively with her cast and designers to find the best ways to dramatize the material, creating a scrip as she moves along.She was awarded a genius grant and well deserves it. The resultant play, in this case, is poetic, beautiful, surprising and altogether wonderful.
5.0 out of 5 stars
The best play that I have ever read.,
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: The Arabian Nights: A Play (Paperback)
The best play that I have ever read. It wonderfully encompasses all the stories of the the 1001 nights.
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