Iranians arrested over performance of Shakespeare play

Two people have been arrested in Iran for their involvement in a production of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Director Maryam Kazemi and venue manager Saeed Asadi were detained on the orders of the judiciary, a senior official told the ISNA news agency.

The popular play had already been showing for seven nights at City Theatre, one of Tehran’s most famous venues and only had one night left to run when the pair were arrested, according to AFP.

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The two were granted bail of £18,400 each and are expected to be released later today.

A trailer of the performance shared on social media showed female actors dancing with men, an illegal act under the Islamic Republic’s strict rules, the Associated Press reports.

The main objections to the performance were about the “type of music played” and the actors’ “movements” in the trailer, said Shahram Karami, of the ministry of culture and Islamic guidance.

“The issue was with the trailer they released and not the play’s content,” he added.

Religious hardliners in the country have little tolerance for music, dance or theatre from the West.

Earlier this year, a teenage girl was arrested after she posted a clip of herself dancing on Instagram, and in 2014 a group of young people were detained for appearing in a video dancing to Pharrell Williams' song Happy.

Arash Sobhani, leader singer of the Iranian underground rock group Kiosk, told BBC Persian that the authorities attempts to crackdown on “un-Islamic” behaviour were not working.

“They banned our music, broke our guitars, attacked our parties and stopped our concerts,” he said. “But did we stop? No!”