‘Noon Panir in the Dark’ sheds light on humanity, complexities behind women’s rights movement in Iran

BY SOPHIE-MARIE CHADHA

The Dartmouth Staff

From Friday, Jan. 27 to Monday, Jan. 30, 005 Sudikof Hall was transformed into an intimate Iranian classroom for the production of “Noon Panir in the Dark,” a play written by Armita Mirkarimi ’25. The winner of the 2022 Ruth and Loring Dodd Playwriting Competition, this is the frst play to be staged in Sudikof while the Hopkins Center undergoes renovations.

Located in a classroom, Iranian newspaper clippings plastered the walls, Persian rugs decorated the floor and subliminal messages covered the chalkboard — from the “women life freedom” mantra written in Farsi to important dates in the history of the women’s rights movement in Iran.

Of the fve main characters, four were played by Dartmouth undergraduates — Uma Misha ’26, Julia Abbott ’26, Tanaz Muhamed ’26 and Elda Kahssay ’24 — and one by a professional IranianAmerican actor from New York City, Sanam Laila Hashemi. In the two Saturday performances, Mirkarimi herself stepped into the role of Farzaneh at the last minute because one of the actresses was struggling with severe concussion symptoms.

Mirkarimi said that she had the unique opportunity to act in her own play and experienced it from multiple perspectives over the course of the weekend.

“I think throughout this entire process I’ve been feeling very lonely. Because it’s just an odd feeling to write about something that you are kind of a part of and yet also detached from,” Mirkarimi said. “When I’m watching it, I’m thinking, ‘are they going to laugh at the jokes? Are they going to understand what I’m saying?’ But when I was in it, it just happened. I felt like I was with the other actresses.”

The unique setting of the performance plays a large role in creating that sense of closeness in the piece. After the initial silence breaks and the characters come into the room, the only light source is an enormous candle on the table that was created specifcally for the play to ft Mirkarimi’s vision of muting the senses of both the audience and the actors.

An experienced writer who has explored many literary forms, Mirkarimi said that this surrealist play broke all of her usual rules and limitations for playwriting.

“For a long time, I had this notion that if it’s not producible, it’s not good. But then with ‘Noon Panir,’ I just went for it,” Mirkarimi said.

Beatrice Burack ’25, who attended the play, said that she appreciated the intellectual complexity of the play. From the literary references to the specifc intention behind the actors’ every subtle movement, Burack described seeing the “manifestation of the [Iranian] culture” in the play as “a privilege.”

“Something I found really powerful about this play is the fact that the main characters are college women. As a female college student in the U.S., that perspective made a very foreign cultural experience to me a bit more accessible,” Burack said. Kahssay, the actress who played the daydreamer Leyli, similarly noted how the raw emotion and vulnerability of the characters really struck a chord with the audience.

“What I love about the play is the fact that, yes, it’s really heavy, and it’s really sad, but the characters are so well-developed that they kind of remind you of girls that you might have in your own life, so there is still that relatability,” Kahssay said.

Mirkarimi said that she aims to capture the multifaceted nature of being human in her play.

“I wanted to tell a story of being Iranian and honestly just growing up that isn’t completely surrounded by pain and trauma.

I hope people laugh,” Mirkarimi said.

In the Q&A session after the opening night performance, Mirkarimi and the cast reinforced that they are constantly grappling with whether they have the right to be telling this story in the frst place. Mirkarimi made a clear statement to that efect:

“I don’t want to give the impression that this is what Iran is,” Mirkarimi said. “The stark, ugly reality of it is that I get to write my little plays and put this thing on… but there are people who are actually dying every day. That is something I really struggle with reconciling.”

Kahssay recalled how Mirkarimi helped her through her concerns about doing the story justice as a non-Iranian woman by making sure that she and the other actors were knowledgeable about the subject. She added that the actors went into the process highly conscious that they were tackling a really pressing and sensitive subject for many people.

“50 percent of the rehearsal process was parsing through the script, making sure we got all of the references and that we were