21:30, Wed 25th – Sat 28th November 2026 at Corpus Playroom
Michaelmas Week 7
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On a remote island, three travellers find a single inhabitant: Lola, a middle-aged woman with no eyelids, keeping her eyes wet with collected rain. She offers food and shelter, then delivers a warning: anyone who sleeps here will meet the worst nightmares of their life. They don’t listen. When the nightmares come, they’re so brutal the travellers beg for one solution they never imagined: cut off our eyelids, so we can’t sleep again. Lola agrees. The wounds heal. The days stretch on. And then something stranger begins to happen, they start to drift into sleep with their eyes open.
The play was written in 2018 in Persian and staged at Tehran City Theatre under the original title Lolita. While it shares its title with Nabokov’s novel, it is not an adaptation. Through an allegorical narrative, the play explores themes of women’s rights, free will, and the formation of law, with particular focus on child abuse and underage marriage and their lasting impact. It was translated into English in 2025. A recording of the original production can be viewed here: https://farshadjafari.ir/projects/lolita.html