About the shows “Angar”, “Parliament Square”, “Changal” and “Room”; Short theatrical flashes in the time of long sorrows

Charso Press: Theater continues to be mass-produced without adding much audience to theaters. Of course, the number of shows with the phrase “full” indicating that their performance was well received is gradually increasing. But many of the performances do not have a large audience and suffer from inattention on the part of the audience. The combination of this reception and neglect is a sign of the general situation of the theater in these difficult days. Let’s not forget that the presence of a famous actress like Elnaz Shakerdoost has multiplied the reception of the performance of “Romantic Songs of a Crazy Girl” and every night the main hall of the city theater hosts a large audience. A reception that is even more than the show of Kiyomarth Moradi starring Sajjad Afsharian. Anyway, the urban middle class has shown that it is ready to pay for its interests and tastes and to fill theater halls with several hundred people with expensive tickets. The slogan “theater for everyone” is no longer heard, and in fact, the main criterion of theater groups and managers is “sales”. This vicious cycle will undoubtedly have complications and will turn the future of the theater into a material thing with unfortunate tastes. But what is the solution when the theater economy is “neoliberalized” and in this sales oriented market, whoever has money can buy a ticket and watch his favorite actor up close.

The first show-like

In the show “As if” the problematic relationship between language and objects is narrated once again. An attempt to show the crisis of representation between the signifier and the signified in a symptomatic system, where the Lacanian reality is supposed to be expressed in the guise of the possibilities of language through becoming symbolic. But “Angar” wants to resist this onslaught of the symbolic and return to the things themselves by decentralizing the narrative, using the element of repetition, and turning to timelessness and language avoidance. An attempt that is somewhat unsuccessful with the executive strategy of Abbas Khodagholizadeh. Because it seems that the show “As if” could not invent a new language as a founding power to go to war with the conventional language. As a result, everything that is claimed to be similar to something else, but is not completely identical to itself, is similar to itself and not to that other thing. The show “as if” needs a more radical aesthetics and ontology, and it should attack the conventional language and the cause-and-effect relationship of the world of signs from another point with more powerful tools. The use of negative video images, along with showing the letters of the alphabet and renaming them, as well as creating a suspended world between objectivity and subjectivity, has turned the “As if” show into an experimentalist work that has not yet found its final form. More than that, the performance needs to practice being “as if” and at the same time reveal the differences.

Second show – Parliament Square

James Fritz’s play is a radical work about contemporary human activity. The story is about the self-immolation of a woman who feels she has to do something to make the world better. But doing violence to one’s body when the end of the work is not death, but survival and enduring the suffering of burns, will not make the world a better place. The life of a woman who commits self-immolation and is driven to isolation at home with a burnt body is a metaphor for the impossibility of individual actions to achieve public results.

As a director, Mehsa Sharifi has tried to have a different reading of the text. A performance in which all the actors are often lying in front of the audience and falling into a deep sleep during the performance. It is as if they are castrated people and have taken refuge in sleep and dreams against the state of the world. This placement of the characters on the ground and in front of the audience’s eyes has caused different spaces to become intertwined and the possibility of distinguishing places such as the hospital, house and parliament square is difficult. From this point of view, the staging of this show can be considered reductionist, which failed to define different spaces and become visually spectacular. But with all these issues, the show “Parliament Square” has an interesting theme and in a time when most people are indifferent to the state of the world, it takes a stand against indifference and invites others to act. Considering the fact that its main character is a woman, this play can be a worthy choice to perform in our here and now.

The third show- Fork or Haj Small antique for sale in Sabzevari

The show “Changal Ya Haj Small Antique Dealer Sabzevari” is about the relationship between children and the father of the family. A father who apparently caused the death of his mother and after years of separation from his children and leaving home, now is the time to rise against him and hand him over to justice. But the children should know that the father is powerful and difficult to defeat. He is a man who does not apologize even when his hands and feet are tied with a rope and threatened, and he stares into the eyes of his disobedient children in silence. Mustafa Laalian wrote the play and Morteza Rabiei directed it. It seems that the director of the show could not tolerate the empty stage and is trying to meet the audience with his hands full by adding various props that sometimes seem redundant. The result of these additions is the crowding of the stage and the abundance of mise-en-scenes. Ironically, this show needs more silence and it is better to avoid using words and objects and create a situation in the empty space.

take the initiative

With all these issues, Changal’s show once again recounts the tense relationship of contemporary Iranian families and warns about hidden violence among members of the society. The performance is based on past traumas that haunt the present and cause dangerous conflicts in the future. Perhaps it is better to reveal the social aspect of these conflicts and not to reduce all problems to the psychological issues of the characters.

The fourth scene – the room

The room show that is performed these nights in the main hall of Molloy Theater has little relation to Pinter’s boring and silent spaces. With a challenging reading of Pinter’s text, Mahoor Tehrani created a grotesque and nightmarish atmosphere reminiscent of Meyerhold’s exaggerated and mechanical gestures. Therefore, the most important aspect of Painter’s play of the room is the place, and its conquest has been added to the agenda and the creation of a damaged and mechanical world has been put on the agenda.

This change of strategy against Pinter’s relations does not find a clear logic and seems to be a personal and formal adventure. Sometimes, in these adventures of the executive group, the scenes are replaced with church hymns and take on a theological aspect. If Mahor Tehrani and his young performing group chose an original text and staged it with this performance method, it could be considered a creative thing, but the room show they have prepared is walking in the wrong direction and leading a spontaneous play astray.

Not to consider Pinter’s world as self-sufficient and to create a mental horror world by making the atmosphere and grotesque gestures of the actors expressionistic is a sign of deviation and laziness. One has to ask what is the excess of this form of encounter with Painter and what is the creative and moving performance of Mahor Tehrani. The answer might be that one scene where the actors are like pieces on a chessboard, trying to push each other out. These creative tactics do not explain the change in strategy and leave unanswered the questions of why this form of execution took place.