A look at the dual storytelling/non-storytelling “Boxer” show

Charso Press: Although Iranian theater has its roots in storytelling, and even its first efforts, according to Hamid Amjad, had the perspective of Ta’ziyeh; But over time, its story-telling aspects fade. Familiarization of the theater community with the modern aspects of drama and of course the increase of censorship in recent decades become factors for Iranian drama to turn its back on storytelling more than ever. If once Akbar Radi had started writing drama for the love of story writing, in the seventies his lovers did not want to tell a straightforward story. Wrapping up concepts and escaping from the story turns into a belief and even a value. Even a kind of valuation emerges that storytelling serves the consumption system and belongs to the interests of the bourgeoisie, and the non-fiction show is a work that serves to criticize the status quo. I remember at the time of the performance of “Launcher 5” show, the opponents of the show interpreted the audience’s fixation on following the story as his inaction, and they interpreted this inaction as a kind of passivity against the times. However, this was not the case.

The story is a human need. Humans have a tendency to understand concepts through parables, and it is this story that nurtures parables. Undoubtedly, a teacher who uses parables and narratives for his teaching instead of dry and sullen teaching and cooks the student’s immature understanding with more attractive words is more popular in school. Let’s go back to the theater and this story-telling/story-avoidance duality, which, in my opinion, is the product of the decline of drama writing. With the strength of the trend of avoiding stories in the university, it seems that the writing styles in Iranian drama have not developed much compared to what happens in the West – as a benchmark. By reading newly written texts, we can understand that what is going on in the form of a story in Western playwriting has no place in Iranian drama. Therefore, the storyteller’s drama is forced to hold on to its accumulated capital and be less on the path of trial and error common in the world.

The show “Boxer” can be considered a good example of the struggle of storytelling based on accumulated capital. A show written by the Kind Brothers is a story of a broken family whose relationships are revealed on the eve of their father’s death. An Iranian adaptation of “Oedipus Shahriar” by Sophocles, which, like the Greek work, is supposed to challenge the characters. The father of the family is dying in a hospital bed in an accident, the revolutionary younger son faces Sawaki’s older brother, and in the struggle to reach a sake, the secret of their runaway mother is revealed. I don’t intend to reveal the story of the show and I’ll be satisfied with that. I intend to open up the story-telling aspects of Shahab and Wahab Mehraban show. Dimensions that are not so different from the story-telling procedure of Iranian dramas. Something happened outside the scene and now different people enter the story and comment on what happened, accuse others, exonerate themselves and of course hide something to reveal the secret that we are all waiting to hear or see. to postpone In this way of storytelling, we are basically faced with a kind of stinginess in giving information, and of course, at the end of the show, with an accumulation of immature information; Because in the drip method until the last moments of the show, he is making the audience understand. He always wants to justify his logic. Maybe it is permissible in general for the characters of shows like this who constantly want to justify themselves and say that they are innocent. In such a situation, a strange thing happens and that is the speaking of all the characters. To justify, you need to talk, and even the introverted characters of the show, who should be reluctant to talk, constantly open their mouths to justify. For example, in “Boxer”, the character of Farhad, Savaki’s older brother, who seems to be a quiet and practical person, shouts at the lack of appropriate actions and even provides information that is not consistent with his being Savaki.

What is expressed is of course a global situation. David Ball in the book “Fan of Play Reading” in the criticism of some performances of “Hamlet” says that by removing the first six hundred lines of the play, the directors practically do not say what happened on the stage and suddenly in the final act we are faced with an accumulation of information and knots. Ball explains how in the first act, with a simple conversation between two guards of Elsinore Palace, Shakespeare provides important information that we are no longer supposed to hear from the main characters, instead we hear their actions and behavior towards the event narrated by the two. We watch the watchman and basically “Hamlet” becomes more than a storyteller, it becomes an actor. Therefore, in Shakespeare’s works, we know in the middle of the play that Claudius is accused of murdering his brother and that Hamlet intends to commit suicide, and what we wish to see is Hamlet’s revenge, not the secret that Shakespeare has hidden from us. In “Oedipus Shahriar”, after two-thirds of the play has passed, we know that Oedipus has committed adultery, and what we expect is Oedipus’s reaction to his knowledge of sin.

In “Boxer”, like most Iranian dramas, this story-telling procedure is ignored, even though we are dealing with an interesting story. There are exciting knots in the heart of the work, the confrontation of two brothers from two different historical fronts – although it has been limited by censorship – is attractive to every Iranian by itself. Even the struggle of members of a traditional family to accept tradition and modernity – they own a boxing club (modernity); But their relationship is still dependent on tradition – which is considered an important factor for advancing the story, bringing the audience closer to the work; But in the end, it fails to provide a major event in the storyteller’s drama. Above all, it becomes an opportunity for the actors to show themselves. Young actors who rarely get a chance to develop characters and defamiliarize familiar images, like the two brothers of the show played by Vahid Montazeri and Ali Hosseinzadeh, who present an image far from the stereotype of the revolutionary left and Savaki.

“Boxer” is simple. It is an attempt to narrate a criminal and perhaps family story. The end of the show, which is the end of the work, is far from the mind of the average audience. The authors plant signs in different ways to prepare us for the end of the work; But it is faded, it is not like “Hamlet” where the sad prince of Denmark listens to his uncle who is asking for forgiveness from his sin at the altar. An obvious sign, something that the “boxer” is afraid of. Maybe the structure of the drama is not so complicated in appearance; But we have a desire to complicate the appearance of the drama, perhaps.