Hannah Allerton '15 of New York City performs the monologue "The Daughter of Iran."

Shana Wallace '15 of Pleasantville, N.Y., performs the monologue "Scheherazade, the Storyteller."

Audrey Burns '17 of Topsham, Maine, performs "The Assassin and the Daughter of the Revolution."

Rebeccah Bassell '16 of Mechanicsville, Va., delivers the monologue "The Veil Thingy."

"The Poets and the Assassin: Daughters of Iran." a play by Reza Jalali and directed by Senior Lecturer in Theater Kati Vecsey, features �ֲ���ý students performing monologues that offer insight into the plight of women in Iran — women hidden by the traditional chador, unseen but seeing, silenced but rebellious, fighting for liberation, democracy and human rights. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

�ֲ���ý College offers a performance of The Poets and the Assassin, a play by Reza Jalali exploring the lives of women in Iran, at 5 p.m. Friday, March 6, in Gannett Theater, Pettigrew Hall, 305 College St.

Co-sponsored by the theater and dance department and the Office of Intercultural Education at �ֲ���ý, the performance is open to the public at no cost, but tickets are required. Please visit or call 207-786-6161.

The �ֲ���ý production is performed by five students and directed by Katalin Vecsey, senior lecturer in theater and vocal director for �ֲ���ý theatrical productions. A Q&A session follows the performance.

The production moves to Portland for a free performance at 6:30 p.m. Thursday, March 12, at SPACE Gallery, 538 Congress St. For more information, please call 207-828-5600.

The Poets and the Assassin uses five monologues to unveil the strengths and struggles of women in Iran as they strive to define their own identities within the strictures of that deeply conservative society.

“Although women in Iran have historically been in the forefront of the national struggle for liberation, democracy and human rights, and are among the most educated and progressive women in the Middle East, their stories of courage, resistance and survival — as well as the strength and character of the century-old women’s movement in Iran — are unknown to most in the West,” Jalali writes in an introduction to the play.

“Iranian women live contradictory and complex lives in an intensely traditional and patriarchal society,” he continues. “Their search for identity in a society that is ambiguous about the public role of its women speaks to their refusal to conform to subjugation in the name of tradition, culture and religion.”

The Poets and the Assassin, he says, “unveils the complex and contradictory plight of Iranian women caught in the battle between traditionalism and modernity, while challenging our assumptions about women in Iran and Islam.”

A Kurd from Iran, Jalali is a Muslim scholar, writer and educator who has taught at Bangor Theological Seminary and the University of Southern Maine, and who coordinates USM’s Office of Multicultural Student Affairs. His books include New Mainers (Tilbury House, 2009), Moon Watchers (Tilbury, 2010), and the self-published Homesick Mosque and Other Stories (2013).

Vecsey teaches advanced and introductory voice and speech courses, text analysis, stage dialects and voice-over techniques. She has served as a vocal director for academic and professional theater productions in the United States and her native Hungary. Her recent directing credits include Wasteland by Susan Felder, In the Next Room (or the vibrator play) by Sarah Ruhl and Collected Stories by Donald Margulies.

The �ֲ���ý student performers are seniors Hanna Allerton of New York City and Shana Wallace of Pleasantville, N.Y.; sophomores Audrey Burns of Topsham, Maine, and Tara Khanmalek Yazdi of Arlington, Va.; and junior Rebeccah Bassell of Mechanicsville, Va. Abigail Zwetchkenbaum, a senior from Providence, R.I., appears instead of Bassell in the SPACE Gallery performance.

In this photograph by Randy Goodman, William Worthy (center) sets up a question-answer session at a Tehran hotel with Hossein Sheikholislam (left) and Massoumeh Ebtekar (right), spokespeople for the students who held 52 U.S. diplomats hostage for 444 days.

Ebtekar, often interviewed by U.S. journalists during the crisis, was dubbed “Screaming Mary” by the media. Now a professor of immunology in Tehran, she talked to Matt Lauer of the Today Show last September about the status of women in her country. Sheikholislam, meanwhile, became Iran’s deputy foreign minister and ambassador to Syria.

As a journalist, Worthy was drawn to societies that had revolted against oppressive, U.S.-backed regimes. At the same time, he believed the U.S. media’s foreign coverage favored American interests. “You have to talk about the imperialist press when you talk about the mass media,” he told an MIT audience in 1973.

Perhaps because of this, Worthy had the U.S. government frequently nipping at his heels. In a well-publicized incident in the 1950s, he couldn’t get his passport renewed after traveling to off-limits China. To a Senate subcommittee investigating the affair in 1957, Worthy said, “I want my passport. And I want it now.”

Worthy, self-described as a pacifist and civil libertarian with a “rebel temperament,” never tired of the hassle nor wavered from a belief in the value of his work in a democratic society. For that, he recently received the Louis M. Lyons Award for Conscience and Integrity in Journalism from Harvard’s Nieman Foundation for Journalism.

Photographer Randy Goodman traveled with Worthy and recalls that “he just never rested. Sometimes I’d just want to get something to eat,” she laughs.

Worthy did eat — often while working. One night in Iran, he interviewed Hossein Sheikholislam over dinner, seeking insights into both the crisis and Iran’s Islamic Revolution. As Worthy later reported in The Boston Phoenix: “Martyrdom is a concept very dear…. If one is killed in the struggle, one’s ideas live on, and one’s work is picked up and carried to fruition by others.”

Here’s the complete schedule:

May 1. Where is the Friend’s Home? Directed by Abbas Kiarostomi (Iran, 1989). A boy defies his parents by searching for a friend’s home to return a notebook so that the friend will not be expelled from school. Farsi with English subtitles.

May 8. The Circle. Directed by Jafar Panahi (Iran, 1999). Women at the bottom of Iran’s social ladder who have no male relatives to legitimize them land in trouble with the law, often for little reason. The movie was banned in Iran until it began winning film festival winning awards, including the Golden Lion at the 2000 Venice Film Festival. Farsi with English subtitles.

May 15. Guelwar. Directed by Ousmane Sembene (Senegal, 1992). When the body of a Christian is mistakenly buried in a Muslim cemetery, a black comedy of red tape, corruption and petty village conflict breaks out. Wolof with English subtitles.

May 22. Ceddo. Directed by Ousmane Sembene (Senegal, 1977). The kidnapping of a beautiful princess during the Muslim expansion leads to a clash between the Muslims and the Ceddo, a feudal class of common people. Wolof with English subtitles.

The series is hosted by the anthropology department and funded by a grant from the Christian A. Johnson Foundation.

Wilma M. Ellis, administrator general of the Baha’i International Community in New York, will discuss We the Peoples in the Edmund S. Muskie Archives. The public is invited to attend at no charge.

Ellis’ talk is part of the series Transnationalism and the United Nations After 50 Years.

An executive with the Baha’i International Community since 1986, Ellis served as co-president of the 1993 Parliament of the World’s Religions in Chicago and was the 1994 baccalaureate speaker at Stanford University.

Previously she was vice president for development and public relations at Spelman College and an executive with the Equitable Life Assurance Society.