Anyone up for a marathon week of Iranian passion plays? The Lincoln Center Festival is bringing three of these ancient Islamic plays [Ta'ziyeh] to New York, beginning tonight. And I have tickets.

This is what convinced me to go [from the NY Times] -- "It's unlikely that audiences at Lincoln Center will respond as the audiences in Iran do. Mr. Ghaffari and his daughter, Rabeah Ghaffari, a 30-year-old filmmaker, recorded a performance in Iran a few months ago during the holy month of Muharram. Their documentary includes devastating scenes in which hundreds of women sob so violently that the dark chadors covering their bodies shiver communally, as if sadness had swept across the audience like a dark shadow."

..."It is a powerful statement," he says, "against war in all its forms."