On stage: Leili and Majnun are the Persian Romeo and Juliet

Centuries before Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet became the quintessential doomed lovers, the Arabian tale of passion-besotted Leili and Majnun was recounted across civilizations, embodying the most profound longings of the human heart. 

A new production at Richmond’s Central Stage that runs Dec. 5-15 brings the ancient story to new audiences with an English language translation mixed with 12th century Persian verse gleaned from Nizami Ganjavi’s epic poem “Leili and Majnun,” one of the most influential versions of the oft-told story.

Written, directed and translated by veteran Bay Area theater artist Torange Yeghiazarian, the production focuses on Leili, who is often portrayed as a passive object of Majnun’s desire.

Delving into Ganjavi’s text, “What I discovered is that she does have a voice in the poem, she does exercise agency,” said Yeghiazarian, who was born in Tehran and moved to the United States as a teenager months before the 1979 Islamic revolution.  

“The poem is 4,000 verses, and 3,000 focus on Majnun. He’s the main character and is seen as a hero, a Sufi poet, a symbol of love and selflessness. But in my staging I’m giving them equal light. I wanted to highlight Leili as a woman who, though bound by the limitations of her time, still made her own choices,” Yeghiazarian said.

The seeds for Yeghiazarian’s project were planted in 2016 when Cal Performances co-commissioned choreographer Mark Morris and Silk Road Ensemble vocalists Alim Qasimov and Fargana Qasimova to stage “Layla and Majnun.” With a score drawn from Azerbaijani composer Uzeyir Hajibeyli’s groundbreaking 1908 opera “Layla and Majnun,” that production was based on Azerbaijani poet Muhammad Fizuli’s beloved 16th century version of the tale.

As part of the parallel educational programming, Cal Performances brought in Yeghiazarian to create and present a 30-minute staged reading. In the process she looked at two English-language translations, found them both wanting, and decided to create her own.  

“I sat down and read Ganjavi’s Persian poetry and was really blown away by its beauty and how accessible and contemporary it was,” she recalled. “I had this preconceived notion that Leili was this oppressed victim, but she wasn’t at all. She wrote poetry and refused her husband. Even as a Persian-speaking Iranian who claims to love literature, I was amazed at how little I knew about this work.”

Dating back about 1,000 years to the Arabian Peninsula, the story of the beautiful young Leili and her would-be lover, the poet Qays Ibn al-Mulawwah (aka Majnun, “the obsessed”), has come to embody the yearning for communion with the divine. The story’s details vary in different tellings, but in Ganjavi’s version the title characters meet and fall in love as children in school. 

Leili’s family forbids the marriage, which drives Majnun mad. While in other versions their love is unconsummated, Ganjavi’s Leili resists her family and finds a way to be with Majnun, which quickly leads to the story’s tragic denouement. Adopted over the centuries by Muslim, Sufi, and Hindu storytellers and writers, “Leili and Majnun” looms largest in lands once ruled by successive Persian empires.  

Like in Yeghiazarian’s Cal Performances reading, she cast actress Dina Zarif, artistic director of San Francisco Red Poppy Art House, and Oakland singer/songwriter Adrienne Shamszad in the production, which also features Behzad Golemohammadi, Yasaman Asgari (Leili), and Roeen Nooran (Majnun). Oud player Sara Saberi and percussionist Josh Mellinger perform the score live.

Music plays a prominent role in “Leili and Majnun,” unifying the production’s different elements. For Kurdish-Iranian composer and oud master Sirvan Manhoobi, creating the score reunited him with a story he heard often while growing up in Iran. 

“It’s the most famous story from the Middle East, and they’re the symbol of love and lovers for Middle Eastern people,” Manhoobi said. “When someone is falling in love they say ‘He is a Majnun, and she is a Leili.’ There are lots of different versions, but Ganjavi’s is a masterpiece.”

As an Iranian living in the United States playing the quintessential Arabic instrument, he embraced the opportunity to design a musical setting that echoes his life.

 “We have three atmospheres, Arab deserts, Persian lyrics, and the Bay Area,” he said. “I realized I should make a bridge, so I used scales and modes from Arabic, Persian and Western music, depending on what language is used or where the story is taking place.” 

In many ways “Leili and Majnun” offers an opportunity for Central Stage to reach new audiences. With roots in Darvag Theater Group, which was founded in Berkeley by exiled Iranian artists in 1985, the volunteer-run theater has become the Bay Area’s most vital hub of Persian culture since opening in 2007. But with publicity targeted at the Iranian community the vast majority of concerts, plays and dance performances at Central Stage fly under the radar of even the most cosmopolitan Bay Area arts aficionados. 

“They may have been a little too insular,” Yeghiazarian said. “Most of the plays there are in Persian, and they’ve catered to the Iranian community. I’ve done my work mostly in English, and I think the aim is to widen their reach.”