Advisory: This show includes discussion of suicide and sexual assault.
“What was one written upon them, written again, in their own voices.”
That’s the animating promise of Ten Commandments – Rewritten, the debut production from Echoes Ensemble, created and directed by Sama Mousavi with dramaturg Mona Ahmadi. At different times, ten Iranian women have made separate journeys – geographical, physical, cultural, and spiritual – from their homeland to Toronto, where they have established new lives.
The stage is their sanctuary: a place where they share and explore their stories. The organizing construct is the Ten Commandments, which are articulated one by one, and then refashioned and reclaimed through their lived experiences, and this shared act of creation. The show is effectively the story of what it takes – everything that it takes, individually and collectively – for them to take to the Glendon College stage in Toronto, to perform this deeply personal show with vulnerability, resilience and evident joy, at this precise moment.
Not a spoiler: it takes a lot, so this ambitious, creatively staged show challenges us with both its form and content. This is archeological theatre: a living deep core sample that excavates layers of history, culture, trauma, and defiance; and nests them – and us – within this evening. We’re an important part of this multi-layered experience, too.
The foundational stratum: the show memorializes and enacts its own creation. Through ten meetings in Mousavi’s basement during the summer of 2026, these women—Nasrin Khatam, Maryam Zohrevand, Helena Mokhtarian, Samineh Sepahani, Shadi Jalilian, Dorsa Nasiri, Ghazal Yousefpoor, Mina Mohammad Khorasani, Maryam Mahdavi, Elham Nematinia, and Mousavi herself—unearthed their stories through a collective autobiographical theatre process. Onstage, they recreate who sat where, who was absent, and who videoed in. At key moments, creative live-shot video projected onto the backdrop focuses our attention on individual faces as testimonies emerge.
Next layer: context. Meeting dates are stated, then given geopolitical and entertainment anchors: developments in the US-Iran conflict, Trump’s provocations, Iran and other teams playing in the World Cup, and more. The effect is startling currency—we connect to these women’s journeys through our own experience of these simultaneities.
Primary layer: the personal. The actors excavate key experiences from their upbringing and experience as women in Iran and now women in Toronto. There is harrowing and heartbreaking content here: persistently gendered expectations, a child bride, sexual abuse, near-suicide, confusion over sexual orientation, the death of friends and loved ones in Iran, and much more. The discussion is disturbing, but how they use it is empowering.
Top layer: The performance. This is the stratum we’re sitting in: this performance, right now, at Theatre Glendon. These ten white-clad women – young and old, tall and slight, dynamic and restrained, but all vibrating with palpable intensity and passion – never let us forget that they are actors. Their movements are stylized, and their address is direct. They discuss the cultural and familial resistance to women even being performers. They describe preparing for this exact night. They literally look us in the eyes: their awareness of us is palpable and essential for the meaning of this exercise. They see us – both for who we are and who we are not.
Logistical notes: the production is in Farsi with English surtitles projected on a screen at stage right. For non-Farsi speakers like myself, the eye has to toggle between text and bodies — a real challenge when the dialogue moves quickly. This is an observation, not a critique: the reward for participation is substantial.
The Ten Commandments structure each section, flashed as titles that enact the tension between what has been dictated and what these ten have made from it. For example, “8. ‘You shall not steal.’ Or ‘Good artists steal.'” Through the layered vignettes — mediated by theatrical exercises like Stanislavski’s “Magic If”, Chekhov’s principle of the gun on the stage, and the recording and replaying of actual conversation — each cold commandment becomes pliable and personalized … and is ultimately rewritten.
Two images that linger: The tenth commandment section hauntingly conjures the ghost light: that single bulb left burning on a stage, after the actors and audience have all gone, for the spirits who remain. The ghost light connects to Iran, which is “my light and my love” for one of the women who has fled it, and now feels urgency to return there, at its moment of deep crisis. The ghost light also stands for what will remain of this experience after the performance concludes.
The second image that sticks with me is the sheer joy – the mischief, the game-playing, and the freedom these actors exult in and share with us as they perform their rewrite.
What was once written upon them, they have written again … and imprinted upon us.
Ten Commandments – Rewritten plays at Theatre Glendon (York University, 2275 Bayview Avenue, Toronto) through October 4, 2026 in Farsi with English surtitles. Advisory: This show includes discussion of suicide and sexual assault. Visit echoesensemble.ca for tickets.
© Scott Sneddon, Sesaya Arts MAgazine 2026
