soulpepper.ca or 416-866-8666Sanaz Toossi’s award-winning play is set in a language school classroom in Karaj, Iran, in 2009. Four students have different, complex reasons to learn English and their teacher’s experience is not straightforward either. Rather, the characters speak English with an accent when we’re to understand they’re speaking English, and without when they’re using their native tongue. Ghazal Partou plays the dedicated and imaginative teacher Marjan, a returned migrant who uses the classroom to stay connected to the English language and, it’s implied, have agency outside her household. Her thoughtful performance captures the character’s combination of kindness, rigour and low-level longing (she “likes herself better in English”).

Source: The Star February 18, 2023 07:04 UTC