At the age of 22, I was crazy about Metallica and a girl I haven’t seen since. Metallica’s CD was always on the player, and at any time, for no particular reason, while writing or not, day or night, we could hear James Hetfield’s voice from my room. Even the day when the girl knocked at my door to break up for always, the CD was playing. We talked for one or two hours with words boys and girls say at this age when they break up. The kind of words the boy and the girl in Dance On Glasses were saying.
Despite the facts I could hardly hear her voice, and that she was keeping saying “what, what?” when I was asking her questions, I didn’t make a move to turn off the music. I couldn’t. I was knocked out by her words and unable to stand up anymore.

Later, I wrote many plays inspired by this event: stories of people who don’t have strength enough to stand up, but Dance On Glasses remains the first and maybe the most personal one of all. Many moves and words were put in Dance On Glasses: the last moment of a boy and a girl, Metallica’s music and two human beings that can’t stand up from their chairs. To be honest, I couldn’t imagine that this personal story would have met success in Shiraz and would be presented in more than twenty cities around the world.
But, the story of our break-up narrated in Dance On Glasses had a success much bigger we could ever imagine.

Today, even if I staged like ten plays, a lot of people would like me to write another play like this. But, I don’t want. I’m running away. I don’t know exactly why. Maybe I’m ashamed to earn money by making my life public. Or maybe because after three months rehearsals, in my house, 24 hours a day, the actors didn’t met since the last show? Even if we miss each other, none of us lives in the same city now. We were 4, and now we live in 4 different cities in 3 different countries. I’m even scared by the title Dance On Glasses. I first gained notoriety with this play, I earned money with it, but it had the effect of a bomb that blown away our group for always. This is why I don’t like this show.

Each time people were talking about the play, I wanted to skip the conversation. I insisted that any other scenes of my other works would look like one of it. From Amid the Clouds to Ivanov, I just kept the main idea: in all plays, it’s about people who can’t stand up anymore, like that day when the girl walked away from me and I couldn’t do anything.

Some weeks ago, I was cleaning my room and found an old Kunstenfestivaldesarts brochure, with one visit card inside. My name followed with a phone number with the “+32” digits was on it.
Flashback, 2004: the show Dance On Glasses come across with an unexpected audience success. The performances are sold out and a lot of people are in the waiting list. Abbas Kiarostami is there too. He set an appointment with me and said he would like to make a movie based on the play. I’m supposed to stay till the end of the festival to see some other shows. The day after or our last show, the festival gave me, through the receptionist at the hotel, a mobile phone with a Belgium SIM card and a couple of visit cards with my name and my new phone number.

Back in 2013. I looked at the visit card and dialed the number. After some rings, a young man picked up the phone. I said hello in English. He answered me in English too but with a foreign accent. So I ask him in Persian: “I’d like to speak to Amir Reza Koohestani”. He answered: “That’s him”. Then I said: “I’d like to ask you the right to adapt Dance On Glasses”.