Zahra Sabri, director, writer, artist, Iranian, creator and soul of the puppet company Yase Tamam.
In Tolosa we had the good fortune to enjoy the art of Zahra because in 2011 she presented at TOPIC her show The Earth and the Universe, which magic and poetry captivated those who came to see it. Later, generously, she made and donated TOPIC a set of traditional string puppets of Iran, which completed and was part of the exhibition Routes of Pulcinella, one of the most traveller exhibitions of our Centre.
This exhibition aims to show the beauty of a country like Iran through their puppets, and the excellent work of the puppet company “Yase-e-Tamam”, created in 1990, which has traveled the world achieving numerous successes and awards with its diff erent shows, such as the fi rst prize at the Puppet Theatre Festival in Prague in 2009 or the mention of honor at the 10th edition of the International Festival of Puppet Theater and Animation Movies for Adults in Warsaw for their creativity in the staging of the puppet show Count to One.
Zahra has worked for almost seventeen years as director, stage designer, and puppet designer and maker. In the exhibition we will see puppets from the Iranian traditional puppet show called Kheimeh Shab Bazi, whose main hero is called Mobarak, but also puppets from other contemporary six show of her: Eight Moments, eight short stories written by eight unknown writers from all over the world; Tooti Par, the story of “The Parrot and Merchant” by the renowned Iranian poet Molana (Rumi); The House of Bernarda Alba by Federico Garcia Lorca; The Earth and the Universe also by Molana; Count to One, an excerpt from the poem by Khayyam, an Iranian poet of XI and XII century; and Mother Courage and Her Children, her latest show.
So far everything is quite normal, but when we talk about a country like Iran is not so. Zahra is a true heroine, a real fi ghter inside the puppet world. Puppeteers in Iran haven’t got many possibilities to perform. It’s not that the puppet theatre is forbidden but that puppet theatre is not programmed, only once every two years during a festival. Currently they are working to change this dynamic, but so far this is what it is. Therefore, Zahra is a true “rara avis”, one of the few companies that manages to stay alive and have a really interesting repertoire.
All puppet lovers must thank her for the eff ort they make year after year to survive as a company, to continue creating shows that delight us with its charm and allow us to approach a virtually unknown reality for us all.