Music has a way deeper meaning; art uses volume and literature, while music only uses sound.

The conversation of some special guests from the show The Tank with the behind-the-scenes camera of The Tank. A conversation with connoisseur Hamid Samandarian[1]

Ehsan Falahatpishe: Sir, please repeat the curses you used for the piece loudly, so we can record them.

Samandarian: I didn’t use any swearwords for the piece; I’m just saying every performance has a form, and that form should have dramatic independence. It doesn’t mean that anything should happen; we should all intersect with our own inner alphabet. But overall, it should have a meaning. We can use a (c), an (a), a (n), and an (e) to make the word (cane). But if we take all those 4 away, it probably won’t be a (cane) anymore. But we use Formalism so that the piece has a dialect and is clear. Form should have its constituents connected in a way that it looks like the presence and movement of a train, its locomotives, and wagons on the rail; the locomotive pulls all the wagons and takes them with itself. Now, where does it take them? Maybe to a desert, but it goes over the rail and pulls them. This matter requires cognition.

Ehsan Falahatpishe: Do you think this piece doesn’t have that rail?

Samandarian: It wasn’t mature. Its forms did have beauty in them, but they should have been worked on for longer to find some meaning. It's like we want to spell (Esmail) and we mess up the letters, then say E, S, M, and… Although these sounds form (Esmail), if we don’t know the form in which (Esmail) is shaped, we can’t understand (Esmail). Now that’s drama. There are complicated dramas in this world that when their alphabet goes together in the right way, the whole thing loses its complexity and finds a meaning.

Ehsan Falahatpishe: Give us an example in shows.

Samandarin: In every tone of voice, every change of mise en scène, every exchange of stools, not only should something happen but there should also be a meaning behind that event.

Ehsan Falahatpishe: So, you think that the signs aren’t consistent and harmonic?

Samandarian: Yes, it's like when we want to say (rock), just saying the letters (r), (o), (c) and (k) isn’t enough to understand this word. It should be uttered correctly. And just when it’s uttered in the right way, it tells us what we meant by this (rock) that we said; and that’s when theatre gets deep.

In this piece, formalism appeared only to show an action with a slowness, a speed, a return, and a stop, but it doesn’t have a general meaning.

Ehsan Falahatpishe: Sir, you didn’t give us an example. Is it like a gap in a play?

Samandarian: Gap is the overall vision of the director. The director hasn’t been able to find a dramatic meaning behind the form he finds, behind those beautiful forms. Dramatic theatre means contention; means being the creditor; means inducing something to your audience. Dramatic literature isn’t the only inducing factor; forms should do the same.

Edited By: Maryam Amiri

[1] Maktabetehran- 2011