About the show “Salam Khudahafez” directed by Shahabuddin Hosseinpour; Poor white family heritage

Charso Press: Athol Fugard’s play “Hello and Goodbye” deals with visible and hidden contradictions in a white South African family. A poor family who are poor and insignificant like the blacks of this country during the colonial period of the whites in South Africa.

The issue is about taking over the family heritage. The daughter of the family, named “Hester Smith”, has returned home after many years to perhaps pocket something from the insurance money that she thinks the railroad company paid for her father’s disability, but “Johnny Smith,” Hester’s brother, received money from the railroad. He denied it and considers the sister’s return to be the cause of the father’s harassment and disruption of the peace of the house. Johnny and Hester’s moral conflicts are based on their way of looking at life.

Hester, who suffered disgrace and infamy from the boy she loved during her teenage years, by leaving home and living in brothels, has been trying to take her revenge on the patriarchal system for a long time. A woman like Hester lives in the moment and cares about pleasure more than chastity. Therefore, he has had an adventurous life in these years and his experience has taught him not to trust others. But unlike Hester, Johnny Smith took refuge in the isolation of the house and started an ascetic life by believing in orthodox Christianity and also serving his old and disabled father. After a long separation, the opportunity to meet again has been provided and once again these two people have been able to review the memories of the past and make a decision regarding the new situation.

By creating a marginal world, Athol Fugard once again reveals everyday life in South Africa under the exploitation of apartheid and narrates the life of marginalized whites. In this African geography with English laws, the concept of human justice is still rare and far from reach. The political and social reality of that period in South Africa was shaped by the supremacy of an influential minority of whites and the inferiority of the majority of society. It seems that inferiority does not know black and white and includes the majority.

Fugard, who once got acquainted with the world of Albert Camus and its concrete facts at the University of Cape Town, experienced the fact that human life is not separated from their blood and emotional ties and there is no escape from this dangerous fate. According to Fugard, modern man, regardless of gender, race, and class, is still bound by the oppression and oppression of powerful institutions, and to get out of this closed circle, human subjects must fight and creatively invent ways to escape. Shahab Hosseinpour, after being away from the theater scene for a long time, has returned to the stage with a new reading of Fugard’s play. The dramaturgy of Mohammad Amir Yarmohammadi has distanced itself from the historicity of Fugard’s text and is based on the representation of family tensions and conflicts. Therefore, in terms of historicity, the performance does not determine its status and is more in pursuit of the minimalistic spatialization of relationships based on characters. In this direction, the use of local lighting, which has been implemented in several distinct lines, has created a confusing and tense atmosphere. Also, Amir Seddigian’s acting as a sound and music designer has been able to help in creating a frightened and lacking confidence atmosphere of the characters. This dramaturgical approach separated Hester and Johnny from their historical context, but intensified their individual presence during the performance. It is as if he has moved from a microscopic perspective to a focused and microscopic view. In any case, for the middle-class audience of Hafez Hall, this performance will be more acceptable than Fugard’s play, because the prolongation of the narrative and, for example, watching Johnny’s lengthy monologue at the beginning of the play, can be more or less boring for this social class. Today’s jaded viewer is not particularly interested in learning about apartheid-era politics. Instead, encountering Hester and Johnny’s pink-pongy dialogues is more interesting. Undoubtedly, this middle-class approach in the narration of the story has led to the depoliticization of the play, and rather than being contemporary with Fugard’s time, it has surrendered to the aesthetics of the neoliberal era.

One of the strengths of the performance is the good acting of the actors. Mehdi Fadhih in the role of Johnny and Hadih Azidhak in the role of Hester are in the service of performance and have an exemplary coordination with each other in performing the roles. Mehdi Farzih has a long history in the country’s theater scene and is better known than Hedah Azidhak who appeared in a theater performance for the first time. But in general, both actors have been able to step onto the stage with skill and visualize the tense atmosphere of Fugard. Let’s not forget that Fugard creates a suspended space between empathy and mistrust by constantly summoning memories and demanding money. The actors of the roles of Hester and Johnny convey these recurring fluctuations well to the audience and appear spectacular. Finally, we can appreciate the efforts of Shahab Hosseinpour, who staged one of the most important post-colonial plays of the 20th century, even with the depoliticized dramaturgy of Fugard’s world. Although the performance of “Salaam Khodahafez” in Hafez Hall was accompanied by a relatively good stage design and sent the audience home more or less satisfied, the reception of the audience was still not as satisfactory as it should have been. The fact that this performance is different from the best-selling and comedic shows of this director and creates a bitter but spectacular atmosphere is effective in this supply and demand mechanism and cannot be hidden. But Hafez Hall has not had its initial prosperity for years and does not continue its work with all its strength.

The show “Salam Khodahafez” is considered a forward move for Shahab Hosseinpour in terms of aesthetics, but it may not be able to repeat the success of previous works from an economic point of view. In any case, we are facing a relatively high-quality performance that is somewhat distant from Fugard’s world to be more contemporary with us. Whether it was successful or not, there is no definitive answer. But whatever it is, it cannot be hidden that the issue of superiority and inferiority has cast a shadow on our world more than Fugard’s era.

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