Sadreddin Zahed

Borhaneddin Hosseini(Persian Art)Vol.3 N°12, Apr - May 2008

Sadreddin Zahed is the very active and old actor of the Iranian theatre and stage; he is a thoughtful artist with the idea of theatre. He is the graduate of Faculty of Fine Arts of Tehran University and also of New College of Sorbonne. He also received his doctorate from the same university. Since he was 38 years old when he was studying at Tehran University, just like a Maraton runner, he has been running in all fields of world theatre and is still running inexhaustibly, from his youth to adulthood. Whenever I see his picture next to his articles, I ask to put a picture of his youthfulness instead since I do not like to see his aged face although one can see from his smile that he still has a young heart. But I like to see him in the same appearance of his Barsisaye Abed, which I saw in an auditorium on Vozara Street for the first time.

They put his youthful picture next to his article.

He started acting from the acting workshops; then he lifted himself up by joining the city theatre team and then went as far as Charsoo theatre and city theatre. Then his acting broke the borders and he went to the theatre of Rome

and then to the theatre of Paris.

Then he went to Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Lahe, Koln, New York, London, and Nice and returned to Paris.

From the very beginning, he was in touch and association with a wide circle of good Iranian directors and famous European ones like Khojaste Kia, Shahroo Kheradmand, Abbas Naalbandian, Esmail khalaj, Iraj Anvar, Arby Ovanessian, Bijan Mofid, Peter Brook, Andy Degrout, André Serban, Jorge Lavelli and worked with them. But his main collaboration was with Ovanessian. From the Disaster of Hosseinebne Mansoure Hallaj to Brecht's (Beckett's) The Good Days ( Happy days) and to the Brecht's Horror of the Third Reich (Fear and Misery of the Third Reich) to Golshiri's Big Explosion ( The Big Bang ) and Peter Gill's The Privacy of the Asleep ( A Sleeper's Den ) to Camu's Caligula and Hedayat's Buried Alive and Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard, he has appeared on the stage in one way or another, from breathing dust on the stage to acting in plays or directing them. He has had a very outstanding and active presence in many festivals of the world. He taught in the workshop of Tehran University for a while in the end of last century. He translated many books into Persian; since they are all about theatre, they were published with the help of Ovanessian.

He is very active in cinema and television too; he has written many essays about theatre in journals including " Theatre Within and Without the Borders " and the same essay " Literary Thinking and Theatrical Thinking ", a new work which is for the first time published for the professional readers of Persian Art. Sadreddin Zahed is still working on the stages of famous theatres of the world in European countries and resumes his artistically opulent life. God bless him wherever he is; we wish him a joyful life!