Memoirs of the Actor in a Supporting Role is the first post-revolutionary play in English translation by Bahram Beyza'i, Iran's most prominent and most prolific playwright, an internationally-known filmmaker, screen writer, director, producer, and editor, and major scholar of Persian performing arts. Beyza'i's reputation outside Iran, especially in Europe, in recent decades has been partly due to his acclaimed films, including Bashu, Gharibeh-ye Kuchak [Bashu, the Little Stranger], Shayad Vaqti Digar [Maybe Some Other Time], Mosaferan [Travelers], and Sagkoshi [Killing Mad Dogs]. His plays including The Puppets and Four Boxes have also been staged recently in Europe, the United States, and Canada. The manipulation and repression of ordinary people by power mongers is a main theme in Memoirs of the Actor in a Supporting Role, and so is the theme of the search for identity. The society presented in this play signifies any autocratic dictatorship. Beyza'i's outlook, as is true of much of his work, does not provide us with a positive outcome or hopeful future. In the end, nothing has changed and nothing is going to change. To Beyza'i, the entire game of politics is a show in which people are merely actors following a prescribed script, puppets whose strings are controlled by a puppeteer hidden from the audience.