Arash is a Persian myth dating back over one thousand years. In the 1970s, the myth was adapted by the prominent Iranian playwright and film Director Bahram Beyzaie, who updated the myth with strong humanist, anti-war and anti-hero themes. Beyzaie’s adaptation has been reworked by Modern Times into the present dramatic form, a mixture of story-telling and physical theatre with stirring soundscape and lights.
In Beyzaie’s story, Arash, a naïve and human stable hand, becomes an unwilling player in his country’s post-war boarder treaty. He must determine his people’s fate by firing an arrow from the top of a mountain.
This play is so meaningful in our time, not simply as a reminder of who suffers most in war, but also as a call to examine our relationship to the nation-state and to national identity.

“Arash” was first co-produced with Theatre Passe Muraille in Toronto in April 1998 and was a notable success.  The production received four Dora Mavor Moore nominations and won two awards, for Best Direction (Soheil Parsa) and Best Sound Design (Richard Feren). Arash has since become Modern Times’ most traveled production being directed by Soheil Parsa in Cuba, Colombia and Bosnia.
This is the first Persian language production of the play by Modern Times Stage Company.