Kites hunting season… an algorithm of violence and magic

A girl comes to Tehran looking for her lost cousin but she doesn’t come back. the cousin is lost, they’ve lost her. At first glance it’s a tale about identity crisis but the writer has cleverly passed on the idea and instead talks about the long-lost dreams of a generation maybe a little bit behind us and past a lot of people. Jalal Tehrani has portrayed a kind of violence that is beyond societal timeline. Violence of man against his own kind, against himself by himself. Scene of a kite that its sharp edges sends shivers down the spine. Every time the girls moves you expect her to fall just like how she fell from her hopes and dreams and her childhood to a hell that she doesn’t even know why she is there. A monologue during which we hear some dialogue. A performance that has kept its story on a thin border so it can be a play and not be seen as a story and in the end the magical frame that he puts in front of the audience. Just like how we know the great Antonioni as the absolute master of chaotic framing in cinema, in his theatre Tehrani shows magic live on the scene. He does things way beyond entertainment and jugglery that the people in theater do these days. He combines every element of the scene from the actors to the lights and the clothes and the décor and even the three capable musicians in a very chaotic yet with an internal order. He portrays thoughts from speech to image. A still image yet rhythmic at the same time… its magic, isn’t it? The Kites hunting season is a new chapter in existential ideology. The girl loses her gender even though she is a woman and talking about a set of contradictions which is the fundamental of human beings. Kiarostami has previously gotten close to this idea in his films but this trait, is the difference between the living world of the theater and the cinema and if the magic happens its way more adsorbent. Tehrani as a playwright has done something that to do so he had to move past himself as a director and as a stage designer yet again he has moved past the other two positions. he has conducted an amazing competition and every single time he has bested himself, and that’s what make the job of critics even harder. they don’t know. They’re not familiar. I’m glad I had the chance to see this performance and if you’re one of the theater people I suggest you get yourself to the city’s theater main hall. Its rare for these things to happen and even if you’re not one of those people I still think you should go, I promise you will become one of them.

Mohammad Sadegh Malek