Noor Venturous
How It Started
Shaparak
Shaparak (butterfly) - Based on Bijan Mofid's masterpiece - designed and directed by Mostafa Ghorbanpour went on stage in Los Angeles on the 17th of November of 2019. The play was a huge success, and it's had three sold-out runs to date. The play is now going to Canada!
The Story
Shaparak tells of a battle of light, and darkness. Butterfly being pure, innocent and full of love and light, while our spider being purely dark and evil. The story begins with our butterfly falling into a spider’s web in a dark warehouse. The spider is hungry and approaches the butterfly to eat her. They get to talking and the spider decides to spare her life under the condition that the butterfly goes down to the warehouse, and collects/deceives at least one insect and brings her to the spider, so he can eat her instead of the butterfly.
The butterfly gets talking with multiple characters; a grasshopper, a fly, a bee, a cockroach and a firefly. But when she hears of their life story and troubles she cannot bring herself to lie to them. In the end she decides to go back to the spider’s web empty-handed, and ...
The Technique
The nature of this play requires a black-box, and a venue with high celling. The Spider character is placed 30 feet off the ground, living in and on the spider web. All other character have mini stages/platforms made for them which are placed on the floor. The Butterfly character starts from the web, however; the rest of the play is carried out on the floor until the very final act.
The play features seven actors, as well as a vocalist with an instrumentalist. Staging and costume design play vital roles in this show.
The play is fully in Persian, however; English subtitles are provided.
Actors
Shahrad Fredotti plays The Spider.
All other characters are played by local artists from the great city of Toronto.
Our vocalist, Maryam, will amaze the audience with her magical and angelic voice.
The Music
The original music (2019) of Shaparak was written and composed by the two time Grammy winner Mr. Hamid Saeidi. The past three performances of Shaparak featured a live band as well as a vocalist. The lyrics, and the music written for Shaparak aims specifically at bringing all acts together; the lyrics tells the story of the scene just covered while the music gives it the essence and emotion that always captures the audience.
Music and classically poetic lyrics continue to be a big part of this production.
Shaparak In Toronto
It is not long ago that we had seven sold out runs of The Little Prince play in Canada (February of 2025), and once we saw the warm welcome, and after receiving a number of emails and messages from the Iranian community, we decided to bring our other production (Shaparak) to the great city of Toronto!
We are thrilled to announce that Shaparak will premier in Downtown Toronto on June 10 (Tuesday night). We would like to thank all the Iranians in Canada for this kind welcome, we appreciate it!
