Mark Morris Selects: Through the Olive Trees

Through the Olive Trees is about a film crew from Tehran shooting in an earthquake-ravaged village using the local inhabitants as actors. But life goes on, bringing the show to a stop. It seems Hossein, the actor chosen to portray a young bridegroom, is smitten with his onscreen bride. Earthquake or no, through graveyard and forest glade, he has asked her to be his wife but she ignores him. Hossein is the hardest-working actor-philosopher in showbiz, and much of the humor and wry pathos of Through the Olive Trees is at his expense . . . or is it?