In the theater, we don’t have a trade union, nor a union, and apparently we don’t like to stand together

Charso Press: The event was actually a celebration of his decades of work in the theater. However, his appearance, which announced his illness, shocked many. In these years, Attila Pesiani has staged many works, all of which were new experiences, and of course, many of them were incomprehensible to the general theater audience. But he has his own style and even when you don’t understand much of what is happening on stage, he takes you into a fascinating world that you want to watch until the end. In these years, he has had many students and has supported many. We talked about Attila Pesiani with Arvand Dashtarai, a modern theater director who staged two works with him as an actor. Dasht Arai believes that Attila Pesiani has influenced Iranian theater in various areas and has made it more creative and up-to-date.

Where is the position of Atila Pesiani in Iranian theater?

If you mean the place where he was influential, I must say that Attila Pesiani, since he started working, and especially after the revolution, has taken a different approach and approach than the rest of his contemporaries. In the 1960s and 1970s, none of the young people and newbies of the theater were supported. In addition, Attila Pesiani was not very enthusiastic because of the form of theater he worked in, and many even treated him with sarcasm and did not like his theater because he always works against the general flow of theater. Another thing that he does, contrary to the usual flow of those days, is that he sees the theaters of young people, supports them for a period, attends their meetings and tries to give them a voice and make them to be supported. He did this in a situation that was not at all like today. Because it was not common for them to enter the theater at a very young age.

I remember very well that at that time, one of the first people who supported and helped a different idea and word was Attila Pesiani. Attila Pesiani’s position in terms of influence in our theater today is very high. His position is in the internationalization of Iranian theater. His group was one of the first groups that became international and performed outside of Iran and introduced Iranian theater. In the books written about Iranian theater, the name of Bazi theater group and Atila Pesiani have been recorded. Before the revolution, he started a different trend and this is the same legacy that will reach other groups later, that is, the culture of having a company and a group. According to its shape, morphology and image, the play theater group was one of the first forms that could be named as a coherent group.

From the beginning, the game theater group has had a kind of view and an existential philosophy and mission and has been loyal to this view and existential philosophy. All of these were slowly and painstakingly practiced and passed on to the next generations, and today we see theater groups that exist and continue to survive. This is the influence that we can say that Attila Pesiani had on Iranian theater, and another more important thing is his way of working. There is always a prominent writer with the group or the texts of great foreign writers have been translated into Farsi. Attila Pesiani’s service to Iran’s playwriting is that he writes the text along with the practice and adds a kind of dramaturge-writer and dramaturge-director to the theater production process. This work was done before the revolution, but the one who keeps it alive and maintains it despite the opposition and different views of this way of working, is Attila Pesiani. When dramaturgy theater and workshop-performance were introduced in the world, in Iran we were far away from all these theater movements and theories for many reasons. However, Attila Pesiani worked in this way and has brilliant experiences with Mohammad Chermshir. This work introduced an up-to-date style and methodology to our theater. Attila Pesiani and the play theater group changed a large part of the compression and expansion and the rulers that always existed in the theater and you had to follow them and were exactly the opposite of creativity.

I think that if we want to imagine a position for Attila Pesiani, he has assigned a high position to himself and my generation and those after me owe him. He brought a legacy to the theater that completely transformed Iranian theater and made it more creative and alive, dynamic and up-to-date. His theater was able to communicate with a large group of young people; Young people who thought that theater is just a person standing in a corner and shouting about big and incomprehensible issues. He brought theater to everyday life and those after him and his experiences realized that it is possible to work in this way.

So I see his position as very bright and I think it will take years to find someone like him to influence the course of theater production in this way and to be able to influence the next generation and theorize a form of theater and teamwork and in This is how theater support works. Many of our big theaters did their own work and were not interested in union work. Attila Pesiani has done a lot of professional work and made a lot of efforts to develop Iranian theater. He has always faced obstacles, oppositions and enmities, but he still fought and has a fighting spirit and believes in what he does and does it with love and has taught many things to the next generation.

He has been called a game maker. To what extent does this title define his work?

Yes . They gave him this title because of the name of the play group and the fact that Attila is a first-class actor and that the playfulness and mischief of children are an inseparable part of his theatrical works and the child inside him is always alive. I quote him as saying that I have a toy in the theater that I put in front of the audience and he plays with it if he wants to, and if he doesn’t want to, he doesn’t play, but he can watch me play. He is an actor with high discipline and first class. At the same time, many actors were transformed in his work and have been saved from those shackles and cumbersome teachings.

I hope every actor has the chance to work with Attila once, to find the possibility to break free from these learned and framed constraints and experience a different process. This different process is the result of Attila Pesiani’s years of working experience, from working with Peter Brook and participating in various workshops to the experience learned until today in the theater stage. He creates a space for the audience’s playfulness as well as for himself, and his strange works that are always ahead of his time are indicative of this process and playfulness. This being a game maker produces different meanings, but for me, Attila’s game making is more about putting you in an attractive and beautiful childlike toy. Of course, children sometimes fight with each other when they play, but that is also enjoyable. This game is an endless and enjoyable game that makes one think at the same time. Behind his theaters there has always been a powerful thought and concept that is best conveyed to the audience.

If we want to summarize all of Attila Pesiani’s theater in one word, that word seems to be “experience”; An experience that has a new shape and form in every show that makes it different from the previous show. Tell us about this empiricism.

It is very difficult to summarize people like Attila Pesiani in one word. In a period of experimental theater, it could explain the work of Attila Pesiani and the acting group. But I imagine that he worked beyond the experimental theater that we know, and Attila’s unique experimentalism, search and adventure, and not being afraid of falling down and taking risks are among the most important things that he teaches Iranian theater. That you can have something to say contrary to the officially accepted flow. He taught that despite the fact that you may be attacked and pressured by the official stream, you can do your work slowly.

They say white-fronted cows are rejected from their own herd because they say you are not like us. They are depressed and lonely for a while. But gradually they find each other and form a herd of white-fronted cows. In my opinion, Attila has given courage to other people to move in the opposite direction so that they can continue this way. This means a new way of thinking. It means talking to today’s audience. Instead of experience, I can say adventure. What has always been regrettable for me is that we never did what Attila Pesciani did and compile the path that came from the beginning and research it so that future generations will not have to repeat the experience and know that Attila Pesciani was in the structure And what has the performance and acting and the process of communicating with the audience done and can they add something to it.

Many times, the lack of research in the field of theater, directors, and delinquent groups has caused people to do the same thing again and feel that they have discovered everything from the beginning. This repetition of the path is a pity for the theater for the future path of the theater of a country. I hope that one day every theater group and great director will have a good researcher by their side to record their experiences.

Attila Pesiani is considered to be the continuation of the drama workshop generation and the continuation of the laboratory theater. How similar do you think their work and line of thinking are?

Yes. Attila is considered a child of the drama workshop and he always talks about it, and that is where his look and type of theater is formed, and then he feels responsible to continue this path and has been loyal to those experiences. He tried to follow the same thoughts in his work. He was one of the few people who continued those experiments that could have been completely degraded and destroyed after the revolution, which slowly took root and important events happened.

The shows he worked with Mohammad Cheramshir are his most prominent works. What do you think is the reason for this?

As I said before, the relationship between Mohammad Chermshir and Attila Pesiani as a playwright and director has an impact on Iranian theater. And then, of course, Farhad Mohandaspour will be added to them. In general, the process of writing while practicing and being idea-oriented starts from here and together with these two people, and they do a lot of homework and do a lot of exercises, and strange outputs come from these experiences. One of the reasons is practicing and trying for new experiences in the field of structure in the play, which Mohammad Chermshir has done.

Charmshir is full of knowledge, awareness, study, literacy, and research that experimental theater always needs. He is adventurous, searching and fearless and looking for new things. These two are linked together and create new structures in playwriting and brilliant ideas in the field of performance that cannot be compared to other works that were performed in their period and have left a deep impact on Iranian theater.

Atella Pesiani has acted in two of your works. As a director with new ideas, is he completely at the service of the director or does he develop ideas about the work?

Attila Pesciani has played in The Butterfly and the Yoke (French version) and The Gardener of Death. But I have also experienced other projects with him. He is one of the most unique actors I have worked with. I have always told him that you are too big like a toolbox. A box with all keys and buttons. Like an amplifier device with which you can control the sound and give it different modes. When you tell Attila to make this sentence a little more angry and a little more impressive or to lean a little to the left, he executes all these details exactly. In my opinion, this generation of actors did not exist at all. One of the characteristics of this generation is discipline. He always shows up half an hour earlier than the rest of the group and is completely obedient to the director, as if he is the director himself. He is just waiting for you to ask him something and at the same time he is giving ideas for his own role.

I am happy to say that one of his most brilliant theatrical performances was in “The Gardener of Death”, written by Mohammad Chermshir and directed by me. He is really one of the purest actors I have ever worked with. He is really an actor. The mastery he has over his sensibility and his body and facial muscles, I have seen in few actors and I have worked with many actors.

With the pictures that were released from his memorial service, it is clear that he is fighting the disease. In your opinion, how important and helpful can it be to encourage fellow students and support them in this situation?

Yes, unfortunately our Attila Uzair has been struggling with cancer for some time now. With his high spirit, he defeated him once and came to him twice. He is undergoing treatment now and we hope he will recover soon. I think we in the theater family always wait until someone gets sick or something happens to them to talk about it. Unfortunately, we are very far from each other in the theater. We don’t have a trade union, we don’t have a union, and we don’t seem to want to stand together. For this reason, our rights have always been revoked and lost. But yes, it is definitely important for the theater family to stand by Attila in this situation and say that you are dear and important to us, which of course they have done during this time and made him understand how dear he is to them and he is like a father to them. It is important to stand by all the people who have worked hard in Iranian theater, even in the days when it is fashionable to beat everyone for a word that they do not know in what context it was said. This story has become so dangerous that we want to ignore all the veterans who gave their lives for art. In China, it is very important to stand next to people like Atila Pesiani, Reza Kianian and other theater greats.