During the Fadjr festival one can see that people have enormous interest for theater. People queue up for tickets , audiences are crowded. Can one describe what theater means to Iranian society ? Has it the function of public speech or does its function lie in the art itself?

This happens also with Fadjr’s film and music festivals. For visitors, lengthy queues are the first hallmark, even for these amateur performances by young newcomers of theatre, music or short film. I think in Iran more than anywhere else, because of its situation in today’s world, art accomplishes a greater political and social function. Particularly theatre, which is a distinctive feature of its own epoch and can not only mirror the society of its time but also, more than any other art form, be motion-triggering and thought-enhancing inside the related society. Other audio-visual media like music, cinema, radio and TV appeal to mass audiences and are anguish driven over profit on capital investment; therefore they cannot be deeply analytical about society. Unlike representational art such as painting and sculpture whose abstract, elitist language makes them stutter when it comes down to expressing and showing what is really happening in today’s Iranian society. Theatre has a semiotic language, a metaphor of legends, with an idealistic image of human beings because of the live relationship with its audiences. The audience are present and participating at the very moment the work is created. Because of this, theatre allows a greater and deeper analytical view of its background, without entrapping the audience in a web of interpretations and commentaries common to abstract art. One of the greatest successes of today’s theatre in Iran has been the gain of a lingua franca with audiences.

Your last play “Amid the Clouds”, has mystical elements- especially in the character of the nomad mother of the young man who gave birth to his son in the water. At the same time it is a realistic situation-two young people on their way to England. Where did you find inspiration for the play? In the myths or in modern times? How do you “mix” both elements?

Everything started out like a game in a childish fantasy. Since my childhood, I’ve liked to imagine what could happen if the characters of epic stories I was reading, stepped out, on their horses, in armour suits, helmets and all the paraphernalia, into one of those traffic jammed avenues of Tehran?! If I had written this project at that time it could have been a wrecked comedy of circumstances. But time emphasized the tragic side of it. In today’s world, myths inclined to reform, annihilate themselves and their own goals. I first used this idea in Dance on Glasses and the ensuing effect was bitter and caustic; but with Amid the Clouds, everything was different. I wanted to tell what happened to my country, so I tried to use old dusty characters of our own history, while keeping in mind that the main project was about migration; thus I got to the nomadic tribes, always on the move in search of a warmer climate and that was the story of my characters. They too had to travel through green pastures of Europe, over mountains, valleys and flowing rivers to reach the Promised Land. It’s the show about today’s human beings facing their identity and their past in their search of happiness.

Your theatre is one of extreme bareness and concentration. It is a very original form of drama, still, with a dark side. Can you describe how you achieve this very specific theatrical form?

I must confess that I have been forced into this form rather than choose it. At the Beginning in Shiraz, when I decided to become professional, I had nothing but my ability to write strange stories and a group of well-prepared actors. We had neither money nor a rehearsal space, so we were obliged to work with a minimum of props and accessories; thus the play was built basically on the actors and the drama itself, emphasizing them all the more from other stage elements. Ditto in Dance on Glasses. But fearing rejection of this form by the audience I tried to make sense of the stillness and the narration style by giving it a realistic modulation. For instance the whole story is narrated in a conversational tone over the phone, between the young man and his physician. Though I preferred to tell the story in a direct manner, I was obliged to use word games occurring between two characters in order to make the stillness bearable for the audience. In my following show, meaning my recent work, I have tried to go further on and despite the same stillness of Dance on Glasses prevailing here too, this time, actors are narrating directly to the audience. Despite this, in rewriting the text I have tried to make the dialogue parts more attractive and more tangible while keeping the basic structure of the play. But everything has been different with Amid the Clouds. I think that here, I got pretty close to my own idealistic form of theatre. In this play, the stillness (though it is about migration, about a group moving from one place to another), the directness and the use of lengthy monologue, with narrators facing the public, remain intact. The dialogue parts too, are stripped of any decoration; thus, the unfolding of the story becomes an exclusive focus.

You are the director of the MEHR theatre group of Shiraz. Please describe us MEHR – Its origin, its structure, its members and also your plans. How is your work different from the work of other theatrical institutions or companies? How would you describe your public?

The will of being a group and the main core of it was drawn out of an acting workshop of an identical name. There, while experimenting new ways in theatrics, we tried to find a new style of directing and dramaturgy as well. At the beginning, everything was clearly under the influence of the group’s performers various views over different types of theatrical performances; basically it was about giving verisimilitude to the characters and the people in the show. After a while and as I explained for the previous question, the group came upon new experiences in the field of directing and dramaturgy, which ensued in the review and the evolution of the actors personal style. For now, we are centred on expressing and showing the situation of today’s human being, notwithstanding borders and nationalities, to stage brief moments of his desires and his regrets while coming to a dead-end.

Traduit du Farsi par Flora Yeghoumians