In the theater, the one who tells the truth is at most the elephant of the story city
Jalal Tehrani, the director of Cinderella, in an interview with Sharq newspaper:[1]
The last time a play by Jalal Tehrani was staged in the main hall of City Theater was 9 years ago. It was the winter of 2004 that Hey big man, don't cry ended itperformance in less than two weeks despite the impressive reception of the audience to make those who were mesmerized by Jalal Tehrani's innovations in time and performance impatient to see another show of his. But the waiting was useless; Seven years passed and there was no news of Jalal Tehrani. Two years ago, the conditions were ready for him to return to the stage with The Tank, the play he performed for the first time in the summer of 2002.
After 9 years, The Tank was still fresh and was able to be a bridge to connect the younger generation with Jalal Tehrani Theater. The performance of Listen to the Sound of the Earth in 2012 showed that now - after that long break - it is possible to be happay of reducing interval between Jalal Tehrani's shows , and be more hopeful than ever about his continued presence. Now his Cinderella is on stage in the main hall; A show in which all the familiar components of Jalal Tehrani (from the special type of dialogue to the stage arrangement, work with light and music, and acting style) seem more mature than ever.
It is better to start with the title of the show. We are not going to see another adaptation of the famous Cinderella; We are dealing with a woman who ironically called Cinderella because her shoe was left in someone's room. If only this issue was enough, the title would be less questionable. But apart from this, Cinderella is referred to several times; The disaster is supposed to happen at 12 o'clock. In a part of the performance, we see a girl with a broom in her hand, which is reminiscent of Cinderella, and somewhere we learn that the captain keeps a Cinderella cartoon in his desk drawer. The collection of these tempts the audience to look for a meaningful relationship between what they saw and the original story of Cinderella.
The dramatic perception of any work has different levels.
After Listen to the sound of the Earth where the dramatic and story-telling aspects were greatly reduced in favor of poetry and philosophical speech, Cinderella is, in my opinion, your return to the mood of The Tank and Hey big man! Don’t cry. The grotesque humor and the unfamiliar and cryptic atmosphere of Cinderella reminds one of Hey big man! Don’t cry and the mysterious plot, the theme of murder and the anxiety that waves in the scenes evokes The Tank. It seems that the dramatic elements - which you deliberately avoided to Listen to the sound of the Earth - have become especially important for you here.
The importance of these things that you say increases and decreases according to the text and the implementation idea.Listen to the sound of the Earth was formed from the combination of a short play, a short story and some poems. I had written some dialogue to link all this. Cinderella has been performed from the rehearsal of a play.
Regardless of the fact that we are dealing with a multi-layered and suspenseful plot, the most attractive element of the text is the language; A language that uses a series of words to give a philosophical flavor to any simple conversation. Sometimes it defamiliarizes with a sudden change of tone, and sometimes it expands the semantic range of its sentences by repetition. These identifiers can also be traced in your other works. Language seems to be your main concern in playwriting. Do you agree with this interpretation?
According to the available documents, since the time of Achilles, language has been the main pillar of the theater. For several decades, speechless theaters have been produced for sociological reasons. But the playwright is still the one who writes the dialogue. Now, how much a writer should pay attention to language in a general sense is a point that scholars disagree about. Perhaps it is better to say the main tool; Instead of the main concern. For me, often, everything in a text is found within the language.
Do you think that the dialogues can be fully understood or not, while writing the text? The words are carved separately and placed together, and this is so without additions that sometimes the audience does not have the opportunity to connect the sentences with each other or follow the story.
Dialogues are not meant to convey their meaning to you. Dialogue guides you to the world of text. If you have entered the world of Cinderella, it means that the dialogues have done their work with you. You may have missed a range of dialogues, or you may have been left behind. This is not very important. In normal life, many times you reach your desired result without hearing all the words of a situation. This is something that taxi drivers are good at. Most of the time, they know a word of the address that you give on the side of the street. They recognize the rest from the position in which they are placed. A few moments later, you are in a taxi, or you are still standing on the side of the street, without hearing each other's words.
In both cases, there is nothing ambiguous for you. This is related to instinctive intelligence, social intelligence, perhaps most importantly experiential intelligence of Both you and the driver. Theater can quickly increase your experiential intelligence in facing yourself. In this case, you won't have a problem with missing a few dialogues.
When we focus on the details, we see that the show tries to negate all our presuppositions and judgments and leave many of our questions unanswered. For example, we do not have certainty about the geography and time of the story; When people enter and leave, sometimes the sound of a car alarm is heard, and sometimes the sound of a stroller. The sound of sea waves is played several times and the body movements of the actors are as if they are standing on a floating surface - for example, a ship. When we find the arguments of the investigator about the conspiracies of the Sergeant, Timsar and Cinderella to be reasonable, and we are getting close to a definite judgment, the sergeant's back strap comes to the scene to mess up our puzzle with his words. The story of General Bear is the most ambiguous and remains a borderline between rumor and reality until the end. Can it be said that the show - in line with the theme of rumor's dominance over human relationships - deliberately avoids answering our questions and leaves us in uncertainty?
You should be aware that none of the people in any play are necessarily telling the truth. An honest person needs these TV series. In the theater, the one who tells the truth is at most the elephant of the story city. It does nothing.
I think this explanation is also necessary; that truthfulness here differs from moral definitions of honesty in social life. In the theater, one of the peaks of lying is when the character lies to himself. It means that honesty in theater has more dramatic dimensions than moral.
Faces are often cold, and games are highly controlled and stylized. Does this kind of playfulness simply come back to your particular aesthetic, or can it also be interpreted in connection with the thematic aspects of the play?
The style of performing is not chosen for just one reason. There are various reasons for each choice. Many reasons are found after choosing the method.
Because during the rehearsal, the selections themselves are giving direction to the other parts of the theater. Choices from this path; They gained a firm foothold in the work. Every choice, if its foundation is strong, gives shape to a lot of other choices. The playings in Cinderella are not cold, but created frome other selections of the performance.
What is the reason for using the same actor for the role of captain and investigator and emphasizing that they are very similar?
As if these two characters are not supposed to be completely separated from each other despite their clear differences.
Timsar and Sergeant also have an actor. The answer to this question is also related to your previous question. Variety and origin in this performance derived from many things Including vast diveristy in the tone of the actors or, The physical differences of the characters have been minimized. This attribute is related to the theme found for this implementation.
In parts of the show, we see two characters who have no role in making the drama (the piano player and the singer) and their presence is associated with creating an interruption in the main story line. It reminded me of your recent performance of "The Tank". There, too, we could see pseudo-performances that were very unrelated to the main body. Is this just an opportunity for the audience who needs to breathe after all the dialogue full of points, or can it be given another function?
There is a thin line between performance and theater. In some languages, these two words are used interchangeably. The theater itself is enough to explain these elements, these distances, this change of spaces. We don't need to call it by another name. The musician and the singer are both formed from the exercises.
However, the semantic load of many dialogues such as Listen to the sound of the Earth is impressive, but here the philosophical dimensions are resolved in a dramatic structure and are fully used in line with storytelling. However, in my opinion, in the final parts, the moral-philosophical weight of the sentences exceeds their dramatic weight, and this has damaged the uniformity of the performance.This issue is intensified in the captain's final monologue; It is as if he is going to convey an idea that has already been well-formed, in the form of a message-laden speech.
In this text, everyone is trying to understand what is going on. Each of them explains the situation in a way depending on their vision and structure. The captain explains the situation in his own way. You also can explain it yourself. The captain does not have a speech. He is going through everything once for himself and for Cinderella. From his own perspective. Do I (writer-designer-director) agree with Sarvan? Unlikely. He is a theorist. What he says is his theorizing about the disaster that he himself is the victim of.
And the last word?
Cinderella project ends on Friday this week. These nights, some people sit on the steps of the main hall, the audience stays behind the door. For this reason; We have performed twice in the last three nights. As usual in this project; 10% of my energy and mind is spent on theater, 90% is spent on all kinds of negotiations and sidelines of directing. From bargaining with the sound operator, who thinks two hours of work a day is too much; to bargaining with a spectator who cannot live without his cell phone for even two hours; Bargaining with the custodian of the mosque, which consists of two shanties next to the park and whose speakers are set towards the wall of the city theater, to bargaining with managers.
Amir Hossein Siadat
[1] Sharq newspaper, ۲۰۱۳