Abbas Na’lbandian’s (1947-1987) plays, renowned for their lengthy and enigmatic titles, are imbued with themes of desolation, suffering, and profanation as they depict characters who, as resentful members of the downtrodden in Iran, strive for impossible redemption. As a pioneer of the absurdist genre in the Iranian pre-revolutionary theatre, Na’lbandian creates characters who are affected by existential angst; they are perpetually haunted by existential crises for which they find no remedy. Na’lbandian crafted his most admired play, Suddenly: This Beloved of God Died in the Love of God, This God-Slain Died by the Sword of God (1971), in six elegiac acts. The play centers around the tragic life of Fereydoon— a schoolteacher and an alcoholic who has lost his job and resides alongside other poverty-stricken characters— within the dilapidated confines of a shabby house. On the Day of Ashura, the tenth day of Muharram, the first month of the Islamic calendar, Fereydoon is murdered by his housemates in the misguided hopes of securing a casket in which they assume are valuable possessions and gold. Fereydoon’s death, accompanied by recitations of the Koran and the rhythmic sounds of self-flagellation, is in numerous ways reminiscent of ta’ziyeh, a Shi’ite dramatic form depicting the martyrdom of Husayn ibn Ali in the battle of Karbala on the tenth day of Muharram in 680 AD. Suddenly... has abundant references to the Koran, Shi’ite symbols, martyrdom, and Iranian myths and poetry. In this essay, I will undertake close readings of specific scenes in Suddenly... to delineate the Shi’ite affective concept of mazlumiyyat — the state of having been wronged, which indexes a fatality speaking to the simultaneity of being oppressed and innocent— and its embodied, emotive forms depicted in the play and its organizing tonality. Iranian studies scholar Hamid Dabashi elucidates the concept of mazlumiyyat, derived from its trilateral, paradoxical Arabic root of ZLM, encompassing both "tyranny" and "injustice." Taking my cue from this conceptualization of mazlumiyyat in Shi’ite history, I will lean into the Shi’ite dramatic form of ta’ziyeh to trace its affective realization in the form and content of Na’lbandian’s text. I posit that via the function of voices eluding and transcending the stage, remaining within the unseen realm of the off-stage, Suddenly...emerges as an avant-garde ta’ziyeh.