A Play for Mona

On the 3rd and 10th of November, the Boston television station BNN aired a show produced by students of Emerson College, who asked a Bahá’í on their campus to speak about a documentary he made on the life of Mona Mahmudnizhad, one of the Faith’s youngest martyrs during the Iranian Revolution. Luis Dechtiar was interviewed by his peers at the arts and communications school, giving background on the Bahá’í Faith and on the persecution faced by Mona and other youth in Iran. The interview and 19-minute documentary were then screened for the college campus on the Emerson Channel, and for the Boston region on BNN.

The documentary A Play for Mona, co-directed and edited by Luis Dechtiar and Ken Cabot, follows the performance of a play that interprets the story of Mona’s life through a dream she had about her choices as a servant of Bahá’u’lláh. The film goes behind-the-scenes with the actors, crew and playwright Mark Perry, explaining the process that brought the story of Mona to the stage. Perry’s company, The Drama Circle performed the play A Dress for Mona at the Durham Arts Council in North Carolina, April 2003 with local actors. The film-makers explore how Mona’s sacrifice brought this group together to honor her spirit, eventually inspiring many others on their path of service.

Premiered at the 2005 North East Bahá’í Youth Festival, and released on DVD by Fifth Epoch Press, the taped play and documentary have been received with unique enthusiasm. At Emerson’s EVVY Awards, the nation’s largest student-run live show, A Play for Mona was awarded Best Documentary, and the acceptance speech was broadcast in Boston, NYC, LA, and on the web. Subsequently the film was screened in Boston to students, parents and the public, as part of the awards’ showcase.

Within the Bahá’í community, the DVD has also been used as an educational tool. At a summer school in Evoia, Greece, the youth had a screening and discussion of the documentary during their arts program. At the Native American Bahá’í Institute in Arizona, the play was shown to a Native gathering, where a 7-year-old was moved to hastily declare his desire to be a Bahá’í, regardless of whether he might, as Mona did, suffer persecution. The adults patiently explained that he would not face that sort of danger here, and held a ceremony for the boy to acknowledge his kindled faith.

 

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