The desire to write [1]

After seeing the first performance of the Tank play with all the troubles of the first performance, which is familiar to the people of the theater. Only one thing occupied my mind; That we are faced with an honorable performance in Iranian theater. After seeing the third performance of this work, my emphasis on the word "honorable" increased.

It is the most proper word when faced with this show; which Jalal Tehrani staged again after nearly ten years, with the same actors in Molavi Hall. The honorability of The Tank lies in the confidence it inspires in the audience, who are faced with a proper theatrical production without any bamboozling to hide the flaws in the text or the performance. The Tank will be performed until February 12 in Molavi Hall. I hope the administration appreciate it and even after the festival, the performance will be extended.

First of all, where does the play start from for you?

From the desire to write; Always.

I asked this question because in the Tank script, regardless of the idea of ​​the plot, the special and rare and attractive characters that exist in it, the prominent element in this play is the genre of dialogue writing. At the same time that The Tank is a storyteller type of play and has a storyline that develops consequentially, the playwright uses a kind of dialogue writing that we have seen more in absurd plays. That is, certain words and lines are repeated throughout the play, and sometimes these repetitions continue so much that the word becomes empty of meaning. But the context and atmosphere are created in this way.

The Repetition in the play of The Tank is not necessarily meant to empty words of meaning, but is also related to changing the meaning of the words; It means to modify the languages rules between us. In fact, the reason for the repetitions is to expand the meaning of the word throughout the text. Repetition; is a technique that is mostly used in comedy plays. In comedy works, the repetition of a word changes its meaning. Which makes people laugh. In the tank, these repetitions often do not lead to laughter. But a context is created in which the circle of the definitions of the words change.

In the history of our contemporary playwriting...; Although I don't think the history of our playwriting is more than a hundred years.

A few and a hundred years...

I don’t think Akhondov and reste were much…

Why?! Mirza Agha Tabrizi was a writer who had never seen a theater in his life. Of course, he had seen roohozi and taziye (traditional Iranian comic play), but he had never seen a play in the theater, and he starts writing plays with his imaginations of the theater and has written very valuable texts. Still today, many of our playwrights are not on the same level as Mirza Agha.

But in the play of The Tank, we are not faced with a direct reference to a specific climate. The play itself constructs a gas station setting, but does not refer to a specific geography. We don't know if there is a gas station on the side of Sadr highway or not? We don't know, But there is the heavy presence of Iranian culture in the characterizations. The way women are perceived, people's fears, a few words that are used in the language and the tone of the characters. I think Ismail Khalaj has experienced this kind of playwriting before The Tank in his past works, especially in "qamar dar aghrab". What do you think about this feature?

The reason why Ismail Khalaj's plays attract, especially in the plays you mentioned, such as "goldone khanom" or "qamar dar aghrab", is that it gives a texture to the language that you think it is the language of the street. While the people of the street do not talk like this at all. Ismail Khalaj's skill in his plays is unique. The problem is the texture of the language. Khalij produces a language that is not necessarily the language of the streets, but he creates bonds in a way that evokes such a language. Ismail Khalaj is the master in doing this.

When I was reading the play, I felt that you have benefited from the experiences of other writers in the field of language. Especially the character of Dadashi - played by Majid Agha Karimi - in some lines reminded me of Ali Hatami's "Sooteh-delan". This similarity is not in the acting of the actors, but in the language and the way the characters are built, there is this resemblance. Especially the scene where dadshi is dissolving the self-immolation of khanomi and her mother in each other, and we hear the entangled, chaotic story from him with a trembling voice.

Answers to questions like this get very general. That, naturally and obviously, we are all indebted to all those who worked before us. It is obvious that I have seen and read Akhundov and Mirza Agha Tabrizi works until today. We've all done it. Naturally, we learn not only from what we read and see, but also from the experiences of others who live beside us. For me, playwriting is not a production process; it is a process of discovery. It starts with one or two dialogues and then little by little we begin to discover the universe of the text, and we begin to comprehend the scales of the universe within the text, relationships, characteristics and all types of rational and emotional vectors that exist in the text and based on that we try to make a proper work. If we can keep the universe of a text decent and not to overdo it; The text becomes extendable, and then it doesn't matter if it happens in a family or in a neighborhood, city or country... it is enough that if it is formed in a family, we are careful not to include the set of terms outside the family in this text.

Mr. Tehrani, After nearly 10 years, you performed this play again, and I think 10 years is a big quantity of each of our lives. Tell me, how much has your view as a director changed after this period? Even though, the published text doesn’t have much difference with the performance we see, and this is a fortunate event for the playwright, whose work still stands up after many years.

You know that I have no special sensitivities and obsessions on my texts. Neither when I perform them myself nor when they are directed by others. During the rehearsal, I have been completely willing to modify the text whenever needed. But I didn't feel the need. On top of that, in the new performance we changed our question from the text. We said that now with this new perception, how is the text performed, and the text gave us the answers we wanted and did not fail. If there would have been a position where the question was not adequate, I think - with the knowledge I have of myself - I would not manipulate the question to fit the text, I would have definitely manipulated the text. Be attentive that in all these propositions, the originality is within the text. Modifying the text becomes possible after understanding all of its dimensions that are related to our question. Even the basic question of performance is provided by the text. In this performance, we added characters that were not in the previous performance, because our question was different. These characters did not bring any dialogue with themselves, because they were deduced from the heart of the text, and now they have found an external aspect and are seen.

This time we see two characters on stage who are not independent characters in the play. They are referred to in dialogues; Khanomi and rival wife. By the way, there is also another character that is referred to in the text, and is much more central than the other two; the mother of dadash and dadashi. And she does not appear on stage. But Khanomi andrival wife's character are shown In a way on the stage that gives them no effect in building the drama. The drama is made by Dadash, Dadashi and Agham. However, why did you bring these two characters on stage? Why did your work need these?

The text itself does not need these at all. The characteristic of the text is that it all takes place in a crypt, and we learn about everything that happens outside the crypt, inside it. But this occurrence in this performance is related to the change of our point of view. When you change the point of view and look at the text from another aspect, then you see things that were not seen before, and of course there are things that you saw from the previous angle which cannot be seen anymore. It is natural when there are other elements that are seen in the text from this angle that I cannot remove them and that I prefer them to stay.

But at the end, the presence of these actors is just a performance touch-up. It does not add any information to the text.

What a theater project does is not necessarily to inform and create a pattern and logical connections. The performance is a whole single action. Even moving a chair interferes in this action.

It means that in such performance, there can be an element present only for the performance?

Not only for the performance. But from this point of view, this element can be seen. As writers and directors, we show you what we see. By the way, one of the reasons why my texts are sometimes accused of ambiguity is that when I don't know what is happening behind a wall, I don't bring it in the text. I show things that I am sure of their existence and that I have detected with my senses. If I change the point of view, it is possible for me to get new information. It's the point of view that gives me this information, and after that, I can't erase it.

Explain a bit more about the actings, especially the acting of Sadegh Maleki, which attracted the attention of many spectators, and during the conversations after the performance, I heard that some people even noticed that he did not blink. As if Maleki's eyes had a character in this performance. This movement limitation, and in result accentuation of the smallest movements, was not so emphasized in the performance of the other two actors. Can we say that we are faced with a minimal performance?

There is no reason to face the manifestation of a style or method in a performance. When the strategic foundations of performed styles converge, their external manifestations also fit. At the moment, Our problem is the lack of coordination. All the actors of this performance and other participants are working carefully and obsessively. We are not united yet. Some of us approach new performance propositions in a more conservative way. Soon everything will take place together!

It seems that in this play, the action takes place as a result of knowing what happened before. It’s for this reason perhaps that there are few movements and the action takes place in language.

The movements of the actors in the collection of works that I do as a director is always small. The main reason is that we do each movement on stage if there is a reason for it. Also, we only do things that we can do in a powerful way. If we do things we don't know how to do just because we feel the need; It reduces the actor's authority on the stage.

A good thing that happens in this performance is the expansion of the scene at the same time as the expansion of our information and the solvation of problems, which of course is possible during the change of the point of view. Usually, changing the point of view is a cinematic movement. But you have arranged the elements of your theater in such a way that it allows us to experience another era in the field of theater, and this movement itself expands the possibilities of the theater.

I don't think much about expanding theater possibilities. If it happened, it happened by itself. In this project, one of the questions that has been added compared to the previous performance and that we are trying to answer, is that changing our point of view means changing the place. Changing the place does not mean going from inside to outside or from house to street, but hopefully the appearance of the place changes during the action. That’s why the actors are fixed and the space around them rotates and changes shape. At the end we are faced with the explosion of space.

Mr. Tehrani! Can you tell me if we will see more of your work in theater after this or not? I saw in an interview that you mentioned that you were planning to make a movie this year.

What do you think?

I hope you work in theater.

For purely professional reasons, when I see that I can't work in the theater, I go to the cinema to do something there. Because I have to do something. Because the texts I write must be performed, and I must see them performed. I feel that in cinema, even if these texts get into difficulties, at least there will be a version of our work out there. But in theater, when you practice and then face problems and cannot make it performable, it remains as an incomplete process. Cinema can become whole, even if it is not seen.

But I still hope that you will work in theater.

I also hope to be able to work in theater. But I'm not so sure. Right Now we are working on the text of the Tank because this text has been running for years. It participates in various festivals and receives awards. It is a text that could be properly performed. At the moment, The Tank is being properly performed. If I can perform another text properly next year, I will go for it. But before that, I have to think about whether it will be possible or not. I have to be able to predict.

[1] farhikhtegan newspaper, 2010