Burnt ground called the city theater

Charso Press: The past year was undoubtedly not a good year for the theater, a year full of incidents and tension to the point that, unlike most economic activities, it was the theater that voluntarily or involuntarily entered a several-month shutdown. It is still possible to search for the news of tear gas entering Mozhgan Khaleghi’s performance in the city theater and find out how the most important theater structure of the country could not be safe for its audience. Nevertheless, with the increase of protests and violence in the street, theaters closed their performances, even government theaters. For example, the show “Father” directed by Arvand Dashtarai, although it was on the way to a relatively good sale, reached its end point only a few nights after the beginning, and until today the main hall of Shahr Theater is empty except for the Fajr Theater Festival and an occasional performance. It has been implemented. The economic weaknesses in the city theater can be attributed to events that did not affect the city theater but the whole country. But is this all true? Was the situation in the country tense in the spring of 1401? To evaluate the economic situation of the city theater, it is enough to refer to a report that was published on Sunday 28 March 1401 on the Iran Theater website, and it contains useful information that can be linked to events in the past. The first event was Ebrahim Goledarzadeh’s farewell from Shahr Theater and Javad Taheri’s succession in the circular structure of Valiasr intersection. Goledarzadeh was the former director of Mihrab Hall and was relatively familiar with the world of salons due to his management position in Tehran Provincial Guidance. Of course, Goledarzadeh’s era was also tied to Corona and there were protests against his choices; But the last days of his presence were accompanied by the success of several shows to at least tie his departure with a good memory.

Javad Taheri, however, was not a well-known figure to the theater public. Although Taheri had acted in several TV series in recent years and was known more as a TV actor; However, this member of the ritual group and old companion of the managers of the Qom theater of Iran, was the owner of a private theater in Qom and played a role in the field of supervision and censorship. However, while Taheri was moving from Qom to Tehran, his salon was closed due to management failure. In other words, Taheri had stepped into the city theater from the heart of a failure. However, unlike the former directors who at least tried to get by with cotton, at the same time he tried to slaughter the theatrical cat at the door of the city theater; That too with the publication of a call and instruction that showed that there is no more news of those eight-year shows of Hassan Rouhani’s presidency. A hot-tempered call whose message was clear, the plays must be what the city theater manager and of course his ministry liked. It was the same things that were published in the controversial program of the Minister of Education to get a vote of confidence. It should be noted that the minister of guidance went to the Baharestan building with the weakest vote of confidence with that program, and this minority power was somehow extended to the management body as well. The result is that all those programs and news for art to pass through the mental clarity of the right-handed managers were nothing but hijacking the performances or giving the performance to the forces of the Monitoring and Evaluation Council.

Although there is no trace of the sale of the “Cherry Blossoms” show in the city theater news; But the absence of tickets at the time of its performance indicates that the show sold at its maximum capacity. The show “Equality” had been performed in Iranshahr for a long time and was supposed to be staged in hall number two of Shahrazad campus. But suddenly he left the city theater. This issue was also true for the show “Father”, which was originally supposed to be staged in Malik Hall. Of course, it must be said that Ershad did not give permission to any of Florian Zeller’s texts at that time, until suddenly the text of “Father” was put on the stage to be performed at Shahr Theater, a subsidiary of the Theater Censor Institution, so that in a way, the shows were hijacked and the tradition of not performing the plays took place. previously implemented to be broken. It should be mentioned that at that time, Dr. Masoud Al-Karfis had planned to read the text of “Father” as a play, which was rejected by the supervisory council. Another show that entered the city theater from this route is “White”, which was noticed by Taheri due to its success in Iranshahr and the support of critics. All this shows that the director of the city theater lacks the ability to choose works and seeks to repair the weakness of his tables based solely on the successes that have occurred. This issue should be added to the inability of the shows to attract the attention of critics to find out how the city’s theater has been left out of the media’s attention.

A total of 46 shows have been performed in the city theater in 5 theaters, so that the total sales of the performances have reached 5 billion 361 791 thousand 500 tomans. This figure was obtained from ticket sales to 80,871 people. Unfortunately, the city theater did not include the average ticket price in its statistics; But with these two numbers, we can understand that the average ticket price in the city theater was 66 thousand tomans. Looking at the price of city theater tickets, we can see that the average ticket price was 92 thousand tomans, which shows that there is a 34% difference in sales, which is a significant figure. but this is not the whole story. Let’s consider the capacity of one of the city’s theaters to find out how efficient it is. In the Shadow Hall with a capacity of 72 people in a set of 12 shows, only 9,746 people are sitting at the shows, while with an average of 26 performances for each show, this capacity is equal to 22,464 people. In other words, only 43% of the capacity of this hall was occupied last year.

Undoubtedly, the manager of the theater complex in his city is aware of the bad condition of this cultural building. The share of this collection from the box office is slightly more than one billion, and this is while the General Administration of Performing Arts is forced to provide financial support for these works as well. If we add the cost of several billions for the maintenance of the city theater to the mentioned amounts, we find out that the management group of the theaters have left nothing on the hands of the government except the cost. In other words, the loss of the presence of many of these shows is manifested beyond the publication figures. This incident becomes more acute when the news tells about the invitation of Sajjad Afsharian to perform in the main hall. Although the initial shot for the performance of “Back To Black” show has been set in stone; But giving the main hall of the city theater for a one-act monologue with no decor has only one message: the city theater is in a disastrous situation at the box office and with the audience. To understand, we have to go to Shahrazad campus, where Afsharian’s play was staged for more than 200 nights to sell nearly 6 billion a single piece, exceeding the sales of the entire theater of the city. Of course, the condition of Shahrazad campus is better than the condition of the city theater in many ways. For example, the sales of the two plays “Perdekhane” and “Who Killed the Hedgehog” with a figure of nearly 8 billion Tomans, have exceeded the annual sales of the city theater. Needless to say, there have been attempts to re-perform these works in the city theater, which have been associated with failure in the negotiations. In other words, the management of the city theater has not only failed in implementing its bylaws, but also failed in negotiating with the artists. This is despite the fact that the Shahrazad campus has been closed for almost a month after the severe behavior of the director general of performing arts. Qasim Jafari, the owner of Shahrazad campus, in a radio debate with Kazem Nazari, the general director of performing arts, after enumerating the weaknesses of the relevant department, has tried to close this complex. In this program, Jafari announced that in the past one year, he has organized 82 performances and 119 play readings with four active theaters in his collection, which shows that in the field of performance alone, Shahrzad has staged almost twice as many different plays as Shahr Theater. According to the announcement of the campus in 1401, 242 thousand and 322 people of the audience have sat at the feet of the shows in this complex, which shows that this complex has been more popular than the city theater in the past year – despite the more expensive tickets for its shows. A number that is three times the most important theater in the country.

Of course, the success of the private sector is one of the goals of the implementation of Article 44 of the Constitution, the generalities of which were promulgated by Ayatollah Khamenei in 1387; But it seems that the stoning of the General Department of Performing Arts is independent of confronting the macro policies of the system, along with a kind of hatred towards the failure in part of its responsibility. The anger that is manifested in the non-implementation of the second edition of the Shahrazad Festival, where perhaps the release of its details will show how the private sector was more successful in bringing together the domestic and international art community than the wide and long Fajr Festival.

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