Scarlet Stone

The Scarlet Stone is a multidisciplinary dance/theatre/music work by Shahrokh Yadegari, in collaboration with Shahrokh Moshkin-Ghalam. The Scarlet Stone is based on the Shahnameh (The Book of Kings) by Ferdowsi and the last work of Siavash Kasrai, Mohreh Sorkh. The support of many intellectuals and leftists for Ayatollah Khomeini is considered to be one of most important factors for the triumph of the Islamic regime in the 1979 Iranian Revolution. Siavash Kasrai, a celebrated poet and vocal dissident of the Shah and the Pahlavi regime, was among such leftist intellectuals. Fearing persecution by the Islamic Republic of Iran, Kasrai fled the country in 1982. After living in exile for 10 years, basing his story on the most famous mythological story of the Shahnameh, 'Rostam and Sohrab', he wrote Mohreye Sorkh in 1992 in Moscow to recount some of the events of the 1979 revolution. The Scarlet Stone uses the modern rendition of the ancient Persian mythology by Ferdowsi and Kasrai to portray the current struggle of the people of Iran, especially those of the youth and women, in their brave quest for freedom and democracy.