It’s about the plays “to be”, “to make” and “to draw a circle” / to be or not to be, to make a problem

Theater News Base: Putting together letters that are not very similar in terms of performance may be risky at first glance, but the point that makes these three performances more or less indebted to university theater spaces is the approach to choosing the name of the plays for them. It is as if these letters speak of a kind of necessity that is the distinction between the generation of theater students and their predecessors. Letters that are often short and signify the performance of an action or being in a singular situation. Reflecting on why this form of lettering has become so common among the younger generation of Iranian theatricals can reveal the mood of our theater these days. Actions and situations seem to matter more than letters and figures. This can be assumed to be a change of strategy and mediate the performances from a new perspective. The new generation of theater in Iran longs for something new, and in this regard sometimes distances itself from the rigid reality of society and gives rise to the creative combination of the abstract with the concrete.

to be
The group “Trivia”, which has been formed from the heart of student theater relations, tries to reveal the constant and dialectical contradiction between the presence of the actor and the theater stage in the last performance that he has staged these days in the hall of Ustad Nazerzadeh Kermani. How an actor’s body gestures in a role or in creating a situation “can” or “should” be evident in the performance of this young and motivated group these days. Therefore, performances such as “being” can be formulated and watched under the heading of “thinking about theater” instead of “thinking about theater”. All four actors in this performance alternately try to show the emptiness of human life through the actor’s body, through Albert Camus’s ontological reflections in The Myth of Sisyphus. The combined and eclectic approach of the play “Being”, by putting together several theatrical spaces and several parallel narratives, puts the actors in the guise of different historical characters. From Hamlet and Ophelia and Sisyphus to Adrienne Locour and a national weightlifting champion. Camus describes the fate of the world as non-existence and non-existence, and explains the same ontological concept in an essay entitled “The play” in the book of Sisyphus myth, mediated by the figure of the actor. With this nihilistic belief in mind, Morteza Jalili-Doost and his executive team find the actor’s body, while appearing on stage, a possibility to bring to life the transience of life and the impossibility of eternity and the consequent boredom of humanity. The play “Being” in this sense depicts the human being in this mortal world.

In terms of performance, although the actors constantly emphasize the need to be natural when on stage, the irony is that their body gestures are more or less exaggerated and in contrast to the aesthetic suggestion they make about the realism and proportion of the performance elements. In this sense, the play “being” can be considered an ironic attempt at the claim it makes about being natural, and instead the exaggerated gestures it makes. If we consider the play “to be” integrative, the point is that the combination of these parallel narratives has not been very successful in the end and does not explain enough why these figures and situations are put together. The show “being” is the product of the postmodern era and the emergence of a centralized subject. There is a time when he does not believe that there is much truth, and even Hamlet’s “being or not being” is not an ontological question, which is ultimately a matter of practice and humor. In fact, there is little news of that reflection on Camus’s existentialist soul and Heidegger’s existential anxiety, and everything is left to the aesthetics and performance of actors who like to comment on it instead of enjoying the theater.

Draw a circle
The mental and objective history of this border and landscape has always been associated with the myth of Siavash’s death. An important figure who is sacrificed to preserve the integrity of a country and in our collective memory is a symbol of purity, courage and oppression. Pooyesh Forouzandeh, as a writer and director, tries to criticize this mythical belief about Siavash and, with the form he has chosen, reminds us of its reproduction in its current state and disables it as much as possible. The story of this play takes place in a military barracks. Four simple soldiers, under the supervision of a strange superior, are supposed to perform a ritual show for the indigenous people of the region based on the story of Siavash, so that the heart of the sky may have mercy and in this long drought, the rain of mercy and life flow again; But the point is that the soldier who is supposed to play the role of Siavash, suddenly rises up against this “becoming Siavash” and shows resistance and wants to be against this recurring mythical figure. The soldier suggests that he play the other roles in this mythical story and leave Siavash to others, but it seems that the historical destiny is unchangeable and he should continue to be Siavash. The whole performance acts against this figure of victimhood and proudly displays its failure. Pooyesh Forouzandeh intelligently connects the war between Iran and Turan to today and, considering the sociology of Norbert Elias, reminds us of the process of civilization in controlling the violence of the battlefields and turning it into sports competitions. In the play “Drawing a Circle”, attending a football stadium and fighting the opposing team finds a function such as battle on the battlefields. Thus, the current atmosphere of the barracks is intertwined with the atmosphere of myth, and metaphorically, the reproduction of the figure is always portrayed as the victim of Siavash. In terms of gender policies, the show’s uniforms for men and women suspend the issue of gender to some extent in order to create the masculine atmosphere of a military barracks. Finally, with the rain and the performance of Siavash, the reproduction of the figure of the victim in that marginal and dry area stops. It seems that in this ancient land, natural factors, more than the agency of subjects, can take the situation out of subjugation and lead to liberation and salvation. The play “Drawing a Circle” has emerged from the heart of university theater relations and is promising. Although the form of this play sometimes fails to connect different performance methods, but this young and creative group has been able to address one of the important archetypes of this climate with an original and critical form. Why the myth of defeat is so fascinating among us, and the inability to resolve the current contradictions of society so difficult, highlights the need to go back in time and reproduce the figure of the Siavashs. The performance once again reminds us of the fact that our situation is like drawing a circle, it is supposed to end from the beginning.

Build
Creating a self-sufficient world that has little to do with the concrete situation of contemporary Iran but can make its mood believable is more visible in our theater these days than ever before. Although “Build” owes much to Pinocchio’s popular story, the play does not place much emphasis on it, and seeks to reflect an orderly, engineered, and, of course, self-sufficient atmosphere. Even the dolls’ body gestures exacerbate this and we are faced with an engineering show. Here, too, like the Zeppot father of Pinocchio, there is a man who makes a living by making wooden dolls and sometimes, like Pinocchio, animates these creatures, but the result of this animation and creation will be what is expected to be a gradual battle between Father and son, creator and creature emerged. In the play, the institution of the family is represented once again in order to reveal the relations of power and repression that take place in it. In fact, we are witnessing a kind of transition from the conflict between the Creator and the creature to father and son. If the contradiction between the Creator and the creature has a theological aspect, the contradiction between father and son is undoubtedly earthly and secular. In the end, with the departure of the wife / mother and the dolls she ordered and the collapse of the previous family structure, the father and son clash with each other and end the show in an eternal conflict. Therefore, it can be guessed that only with the defeat of one of these two people will the work come to an end, so that the constant conflict between paternalism and child murder becomes apparent again. Although the play “Build” is self-sufficient and builds its world, it still does not establish a meaningful relationship with the situation here and now. This is the second time that Pinocchio’s story has entered our theater after the play “Zepto” directed by Oshan Mahmoudi. Both performances fail to capture the adventure of Pinocchio’s story, and begin and end in a more or less closed space. Adventure is a capacity that our theater is unaware of and can not surprise us with a long journey. The high cost of theater production has fueled this conservatism and engineering thinking more than ever. Mustafa Zarrehparvar can “destroy” the theater more than “building” it. It is from a radical destruction that a good theater can be built. We need architecture more than engineering. Erecting a huge, magnificent, somewhat dilapidated and terrifying building, such as the Leaning Tower of Pisa.