Look Europe

Running Time : 1 reading on 5 October 1997 @ The Almeida Theatre

Cast

Mr Sarkoohi's secretary	Anna Friel
Tramp	Harold Pinter
Faraj Sarkoohi	Roger Lloyd-Pack
Security Man	Nadim Sawalha

Crew

Director	Gari Jones
Producer	Harold Pinter
Writer	Ghazi Rabihavi

Story

In 1984 Faraj Sarkoohi, editor of the Iranian journal Adineh, involved in drafting a charter for writers, was arrested for espionage. In a letter written during a brief period of release he detailed the torture and interrogation he had undergone and spelled out his assumed fate. Ghazi Rabihavi dramatised the plight of Mr Sarkoohi and Harold Pinter became aware of the play at a meeting of Index on Censorship.

"Harold Pinter's role in the play is of an angry, drunken tramp whom Mr Sarkoohi befriends in a park, before entrusting him with a letter to his family just before he was re-arrested. 'It is a big part - he is a central figure in three scenes,' says Gari Jones [...] 'He talks in long monologues about how he despises the system.'" Catherine Milner, The Sunday Telegraph, 28 September 1997

"I wanted to be involved, to lend my service, to bring this play to the light. It can explain what is happening to this unfortunate man in Iran. Though it is inspired by him, it is not limited to him. It has much wider application. There are Iran's next-door neighbours such as Turkey. In the States there are hundreds of people on Death Row. Many of them are mentally deficient and, undoubtedly for racial reasons, are presumed to be guilty. They can hardly be said to have had a fair trial. In this country asylum seekers are held in detention centres, some of them for two years, and are suffering in prison with no charge." Harold Pinter in The Independent, 3 October 1997.