We tried hard to reach a positive result, but it was not possible, and we removed Dance^[1]

An exclusive conversation with Jalal Tehrani, the playwright and director of the Single cells play

 Jalal Tehrani is a graduate of the field of playwriting and a master's student in the same field at the Faculty of Fine Arts. He was engaged in theater criticism for two years and authored the book Mehvar-e-sevom on the subject of Using folk drama in theater. This book examines the above topic from the time of Karim Shirei to Hamid Amjad.

Nearly forty short and long plays and the performance of three plays Nefertiti, The Tank and Single Cells are the result of Jalal Tehrani's activities. Motivated by the performance of Single Cells in Molavi Hall, we had an exclusive interview with him, which is presented below:

How different is Single Cells in terms of content and structure from your shows The Tank and Nefertiti?

In my opinion, these three experiences are different in terms of form, but in terms of language, they have something in common. The reason for this is that I prefer to have new experiences, because I think I don't have much time to repeat myself.

You mentioned "language" in Nefertiti, the language of the show was difficult to communicate with the audience, but in the show Recently, the audience's understanding of the language has increased. Don't you think so?

The density of Nefertiti language was high. That is, we often practiced each dialogue piece by piece in practice.

 It made me laugh after the previous dialogue. This high density made the audience fall behind the language sometimes, and I attribute this to the feature of Nefertiti, but Single Cells both in terms of rhythm and in terms of the space and location have differences with that work, which requires the density of the language to be a little less.

Why are the two themes of humor and attachment to the past evident in your works?

When I write, my texts automatically turn to humor, and I usually do not avoid it.

I have two works that don’t include anything humorous, and I controlled myself not to move towards humor with those. But when I put the pen down, parodic things happen, and the reason for that is maybe not just my interest in humor, but something that happens while writing.

Regarding The Past, I must say that the past that is mentioned in Single Cells is very different from the past of Nefertiti.

Nefertiti was written with the intention of commemorating Hasan Moghadam and on the occasion of his hundredth birthday, and we had no choice but to go to the Hasan Moghadam who existed one hundred years ago. But in our show, we are facing a philosopher and the issue of time. The category of time is what makes us talk about the past and even the future.

This show does not tell a story to the audience. Rather, it tries to attract the audience by creating a situation. Does creating a mere position in the show and the risk of the audience's intolerance worry you?

The major part of our experience in this work is what you mentioned. The most important issue for me was whether we can perform an hour and a half show for an audience that is used to seeing stories, without telling stories. I don't know how successful we are, but that's what appeals to me.

Many of the audience say that they didn't yawn from the beginning to the end, but of course there are audiences who are interested in storytelling and get tired in the middle of the work. But I must point out that the shows Nefertiti and The Tank did not have many stories and were more about situations. If we can find the story elements that create belonging and use them to do it, maybe attracting the audience will happen.

 Well, how did the sound of the church bell and the music specific to that space at the end of the show relate to the whole show?

Our hands are tied in the field of music. We usually have to choose music, and this was perhaps our best choice. In addition, the most ideal choice is not possible! The bells are not church bells per se. A bell is a news or a piece of news, and I think of it more in the field of form. But if we don't accept that the character of Lari goes to be executed and moves in blue light, it becomes a bit of a religious thing. From this point of view, maybe the work becomes a bit religious, but I have not thought about the religious aspect, and mostly the aspect of structuralism, sound and form of music that was suitable for the ending.

As a last question, in the part of the work report that is written in the Transcript of the show, it is written to remove some elements from As you mentioned - Musical sentences and rhythmic movements. Were these omissions due to an audit?

Fortunately, we didn't face any audit in this work and the work was reviewed about five or six times. The center of performing arts reviewed it three times, and it was also reviewed three times by the officials of Molavi Hall, nothing was removed from the work. The set of eliminations we talked about has gotten better during our practice. If we have removed a dialogue, it is because the actor tried to portray that part of the character in the dialogue, and we did not need that part of the dialogue. The reason for removing the dance is a little bit related to our own skill, that is, our skill was in choreography design and finding a dance that is somehow suitable for the work or music design that is suitable for that part. We tried hard to get a positive result, but we didn't, so we changed the route and place We filled the dance with other things.

 Maryam Fashandi

[1] Saba newspaper, 2002