original play by Anton Chekhov
text and direction by Amir Reza Koohestani
director’s assistants Mohammad Reza Hosseinzadeh & Roxna Bahram

set designers Amir Hossein Ghodsi & Amir Reza Koohestani
music Hooshyar Khayam
sound design Kave Abedin
costume designer Negar Nemati
video & technical direction Hessam Nourani

graphic design Pedram Harby
photoghraphy Abbas Kowsari

with Vahid Aghapour Count Shabelsky, Ali Bagheri Kosykh, Reza Behboodi Lebedev, Saeid Changizian Borkin, Fatemeh Fakhraee Martha, Negar Javaherian Sasha, Fariba Kamram Zinaida, Hassan Madjooni Ivanov, Mohammad Reza Najafi Lvov, the Doctor, Mahin Sadri Anna

show in persian with surtitles
running time 2h30 (with 10 minutes intermission)

production Mehr Theatre Group
creation in Tehran, Iranshahr Hall, October – November 2011
production manager Mohammad Reza Hosseinzadeh
company & tour manager Pierre Reis

About the play

« We are all Ivanov» recently posted an Iranian actress on her Facebook profile. This young thirty-year old woman, living in Tehran, evokes Ivanov, an adaptation of Chekhov’s eponymous play that has been rewritten and directed by the Iranian director, Amir Reza Koohestani.

If Ivanov was considered as the Anti-hero of modern times, this Iranian Ivanov seems to embody the melancholia of a worrying postmodernity. “We are all Ivanov”… What a strange and paradoxical declaration. The memory of Iranians’ rebellion during the summer of 2009 is still fresh in our memory. Through social networks such as Facebook and Twitter, the post-revolutionary heroes loudly expressed their refusal of the presidential elections’ results. Disregarding people’s protests, the Islamic government proclaimed the candidate Mahmood Ahmadinejad the President for a second mandate, and brutally suffocated the voice of the opposition.

Two years have passed since this fraudulent election. The Arab Spring announced the awakening of the people in Tunisia, Egypt, Lybia, followed by the continuous rebellion in Syria, Qatar, and Yemen. Such massive uprising is the indication of a moving world in which Arabs try to change their destiny whether for the worst or for the best. What about Iran? What happened to the protestation of Iranian youth demanding freedom and democracy, to the outcry of the women seeking justice and equality, to the demurral of the intellectuals, and the disenchanted voice of the middle class families?

In Prometheus Landscape II, a dance production performed in Paris City theater last Spring, the choreographer Jan Fabre questioned the western man’s goals and asked us, the spectators, where are gone our heroes, the ones that would have the ability to change our world today. While facing the audience, a dancer repeatedly asked: “Where is the new Prometheus of our times?” Fabre proclaims that the incessant search for security, the disastrous results of individualism, and the deep feeling of fear, have extinct the spark – the fire that would destroy the ancient order and create a new harmony. The flame in our soul has been put out. Needless to say, Prometheus’s myth remains persistent in the Western culture. Despite the rising of a new anti-promethean way of thinking, despite the reconsideration of the idea of a hero and of a self-overtaking, the West is still looking for a mythical — if not Christian — savior that would bring salvation and hope.

Meanwhile, in Tehran, Letters to Thebes, a performance based on an adaptation of Sophocles’ play, Oedipus in Colonus, was staging a dethroned and tyrannical Oedipus, surrounded by his children, all traumatized by the suffering of their dictatorial father. One hopes that, at the end of the play, children would feel liberated and would build a new system far from an archaic patriarchy. But not such act happened: once Oedipus passes away, his children full of lassitude, lie on the ground, put an eye patch on their eyes, and vanish into the darkness of a devastated stage. However, this final gesture, this collective renouncement has nothing to do with suicide; this shared melancholia is not related to a tragic fatality. Not only it seemed to be the result of a deliberate choice but also, it expressed the absolute pessimism of the youth who believes in nothing anymore.

« We have all become Ivanov». This is what one should understand in Amir Reza’s Koohestani’s play.

In Koohestani’s play, Ivanov’s character embodies the disenchanted Iranian youth. A profound depression has transformed him into a passive and silent person. Closed in a solitary world, separated from the external reality by the use of a headphone, he spends his time learning English (who knows? maybe this foreign language would help him to get away from his cursed land). By hearing this foreign language in his headphone, Ivanov slowly confuses this voice with the one of his own schizophrenic psyche, as he is lost in the fantasies of a lost revolution and a diverted rebellion.

If black color refers to mourning procession and sacrifice which are the predominant themes of the Iranian Chi’ism, white in this production is an omnipresent color. But it would be useless to look after this grayish white, this creamy white, or even this greenish white, any reference to the naïve dove of peace. For the persistent white of a household linen hang on a rope, the haunting white of a light veil moving in the air, or the morbid white of a sheet destined to a dying Anna Petrovna, refers to nothing but the emptiness of a meaningless life.

What to do? Nothing. There is nothing to be done.
A sofa. A bed. All body movements tend to a neutral immobility.
Nothing announces the hope of a change. However, something strange happens: there are some fugitive sequences of luminous scenes, just before the curtain closes, at the end of the acts. During these fragile instants, one can perceive the loneliness of a contemplative character. These visions don’t last because the possibility of dreaming is gone. But who knows, this spark of a dream, this unexpected search for a richer inner life, will, maybe, bring back the hope of a better future.

Leyli Daryoush, dramaturge

Interview with Amir Reza Koohestani

There are two versions of the play Ivanov: one was written in 1886 and is considered a comedy, and the other one, written in 1888-89 and considered “drama in four acts”, is a rewriting of the first version. What has been your choice between these two versions? How did you proceed?

Instead of making a deep investigation on the play Ivanov and its context, I preferred focusing on these two versions and tried to understand why changes were considered necessary by Chekhov himself. Actually, this is where my comprehension of this author comes from: I looked for the difficulties as well as his dissatisfaction from a dramatic point of view. Without a doubt, this helped me to decide on the ending of the play.

Indeed, the major difference is to be found in the dramatic outcome. In the first version, Ivanov marries Sasha and finds a certain satisfaction while in the second version, Ivanov renounces his marriage and commits suicide. I found this difference crucial and considered it as the core of my dramaturgy.

In the middle of the fourth act, Sasha talks to her father and expresses her doubts concerning her love for Ivanov. Her father suggests that she cancels the wedding. His daughter gets scared and decides to get married despite of everything. She sees Ivanov who also wants to cancel the wedding and succeeds in convincing him to get married. In the first version, the comedy, she tells him: “Listen to me and you will be happy” and Ivanov accepts. In the second version, the drama, she says the same thing but Ivanov’s response is: “Nobody can make me happy”.

Sasha’s character is very important for me. She represents a contemporary young woman who believes in the future. She has her own voice, she believes she can change everything and refuses her family’s conservatism. She even has the audacity to visit Ivanov in secret. How far can she go? Why does she refuse to cancel the wedding in the first version? What is she afraid of? Rumours? Gossip? Sasha in Iran refers to all Iranian women, whether students– who represent more than sixty percent in the universities –, film makers, business women, hard-working women, all of them were in frontline of the riots of the summer 2009. They have all become Sasha to me and I couldn’t show a pessimistic Sasha who easily accepts her fate and her family’s decisions. In my version, she gives up everything and leaves for Europe.

In the second version of the play, Ivanov can commit suicide because he finally finds himself. I believe suicide is an act that requires a great deal of strength and I, personally, couldn’t imagine such an act in my country. Contrary to Chekhov, I think that Ivanov in Iran would be unable to find his way, not even the path to death. All Ivanovs in my country observe the situation, they suffer but remain static. Even intellectuals do not have the courage to react: they remain in life to suffer more.

Many playwrights in Iran tend to adapt the classic drama repertory. An explanation of such an attitude is to be found in the censorship imposed by the government. Indeed, directors and playwrights feel the need to find new narrative strategies. But at the same time, the use of the adaptation technique can be the best way possible for those artists to talk about contemporary Iran. In such a context, what was the meaning of an adaptation of Ivanov’s play?

What interested me in Ivanov’s character was his despair. Let’s consider the situation in Iran, the question Iranians ask themselves every day is the following: what should we do now? News is catastrophic, whether it is the nuclear policy, the disastrous economic situation, or the UN sanctions to name but a few. And we keep sitting in our chairs wondering what to do. I realized this depression was the point on which I had to focus on in my adaptation. When my actors read my new version of the play, I also decided that they should not move, because nothing would be changed by moving. Ivanov looks at the events and lets them happen. Just like us. As if the Iranian people had decided that, in order to protect themselves, there was no other issue than an absolute passivity, which means not requiring help and being mortally injured. As a result, we have started to get used to the tragic dimension of our existences, as if all of this was nothing but a routine, with some events detached from any kind of subjectivity or personal reaction. But we know what is going on around us. We are fully aware of our situation, we understand it very well, we even have different points of views on the events by watching western TV channels such as CNN, Al-Jazeera or even BBC World, or by surfing online. Our passivity does not come from a lack of knowledge but from a deep pessimism. We observe the consequences of the Arab Spring and we think that they, at least, have been able to change the rules of their country. We have been the first to protest but we are still at the same place… Nobody in Iran has the strength to envision a war, a protest or to make a simple claim. And we don’t even have the power to defend ourselves. I think the unexpected success of this play comes from the fact that people identified themselves with Ivanov, a familiar character who looked like them.

The language used in Ivanov is a very ordinary one. This spoken Persian language is not always present in the contemporary Iranian theater. You are one of the few authors to use it. How did you work on it in your Ivanov’s adaptation?

It is true that the use of a simple, realistic, and ordinary Persian language motivates me as a playwright. In Quartet: A Journey North or Where Were You On January 8^th? for instance, I was still under the influence of the documentary theater in which dialogues or even words don’t always have a dramatic value. Most of the time, I was dealing with extremely detailed sentences all turning around expectation and indecision, and by writing this way, I was looking for the violence of the word, as well as the violence of the Tehran’s streets, with its pollution, its dirtiness and dust.

But Ivanov is a classic and I wanted to preserve this dimension of the play. I wanted both realistic and highly-precise dialogues. For this, I reduced the sentences as much as possible. I wanted to have as few as conversations possible and bring as much as information. For instance, in the fourth act, when Ivanov asks Sasha where she wants to go since the wedding has been cancelled, she responds: I want to go elsewhere, far from you. All Sasha’s reality is contained in those two sentences.

To obtain such a result, I had to clarify as much as possible all dramatic situations. Characters are clearly defined and can even be identified with the Iranian reality. Borkine is a social climber that capitalizes all situations to make money. He embodies the new merchants of Tehran’s market who spend their time buying products in order to sell them at a higher price to other merchants who will do the same and so forth. It is all about money that circulates, that increases prices but produces strictly nothing except filling the pockets of a minority.

Ivanov represents the Iranian liberal intellectual who is victim of a deep depression. Marta is a woman who doesn’t trust herself and is desperately looking for a man. It is extremely difficult to be a single woman in Iran. She needs to have a husband in order to succeed even though she is an emancipated business woman.

But the use of a minimal language also needs to be linked to the audience’s patience. Ivanov is a very long play that lasts at least three hours. The Iranian audience is not used to remain focused for such a long time and I had to reach the core of the drama in every scene by using less word as possible.

Interview made by Leyli Daryoush, October 2011

Next performances

. 11^th to 18^th April 2012 / Hafez Hall, Shiraz, Iran

text & direction Amir Reza Koohestani
production manager & director’s assistant Mohammad Reza Hosseinzadeh

music Ali Bahrami
light design Farshid Mosadequ

with Baran Kosari The Mother/Zina, Hassan Madjooni Imour

show in Persian with surtitles
surtitles technician Mahin Sadri
running time 1h20 (no interval)

Amid The Clouds was written in 2004 during a residency at the Royal Court Theatre in London in the frame of “The 2004 International Residency for Emerging Playwrights” and created at the Kunstenfestivaldesarts the 8^th May 2005.

production Mehr Theatre Group
coproduction Wiener Festwochen, Kunstenfestivaldesarts
company & tour manager Pierre Reis

Overview

There exist voices that can pierce the still night.
They seem visceral and primitive; resonating from the dawn of time. These voices are laden with the memories of people forced off the land on which they live; forced to continue in a place unknown to them, in a language strange to them.
Theses are the voices that speak in Amid The Clouds. In this piece, the young author and director Amir Reza Koohestani blends the rythms of Persian narrative tradition and the stark reality of a refugee camp. He does so in an attempt to convey the contemporary situation in his native, unadorned and concentrated; giving space for that which is central: the birth of narrative.
On stage stands a large water-filled table and it is here Imour and Zina meet, both on their way to the Promised Land. Zina is pregnant, hoping to give birth and seek asylum on the opposite side of the English Channel. Imour is consumed by his attempts to silence the atrocious memories that haunt him. Their flight forces them both to confront who they really are.

Next performances

15^th to 18^th March 2012 / Onassis Cultural Centre, Athens, Greece

text, stage & direction Amir Reza Koohestani
sounds & music Martin Shamoon Pour
production manager & director’s assistant Mohammad Reza Hosseinzadeh
video & technical direction  Hessam Nourani

with Saeid Changizian Ali, Fatemeh Fakhraee Fati, Negar Javaherian Sara, Elham Korda Sogol, Ahmad Mehranfar Abdi, Mahin Sadri Shideh

show in Persian with surtitles
surtitles technician Negar Nobakht Foghani
translation from Persian to English Vali Mahlouji
running time 1h20 (no interval)

production Mehr Theatre Group
Creation in Tehran, Iranshahr Hall, December 2009 – January 2010
with the support of the Dramatic Arts Centre, Tehran
company & tour manager Pierre Reis

Overview

January 8^th, midnight, a suburb of Tehran, it snows. Four young women are rehearsing Jean Genet’s play The Maids in a house.

Ali, Fatima’s fiancé, who is doing his military service in the police, joined them. He is not supposed to be there, but Fati insisted. Defying the law that forbids a soldier to carry a weapon in a private place, he promises the Duty Officer to return to the police station before dawn. The snow stopped him. Abdi has also joined the rehearsal. They are forced to spend the night in this house.

The next day, when Ali wakes up, he is alone and his weapon has disappeared.

But the house is not the place of the plot, nor the weapon the real issue. The play weaves a series of phone conversations after that night. Implicitly, the dialogues evoke the current situation of young people in Iran seeking ways to be heard.

A central figure in theatre in Iran, Amir Reza Koohestani, writer-director has enjoyed success in Europe since 2002. He recently collaborated with Oriza Hirata and Sylvain Maurice in the creation of the show Des Utopies ? Between symbolism and realism, never ceasing to escape the limits imposed by censorship, his work holds up a mirror to his society in the face of the audience.

writers & directors Oriza Hirata, Amir Reza Koohestani, Sylvain Maurice

with Reza Behboodi, Nadine Berland, Cécile Coustillac, Saeid Changizian, Ryuta Furuta, Yoko Hirata, Minako Inoue, Elham Korda, Éric Petitjean

artistic associate Yann Richard
Amir Reza Koohestani’s artistic assistant Mahin Sadri

set and lighting designer Éric Soyer
assistant lighting designer Jean-Pierre Michel
costumes Marie La Rocca
sound Jean De Almeida
videos Renaud Rubiano

French translation for Christmas in Tehran by Rose-Marie Makino
Japanese to French translator Mariko Hara
Japanese to Persian translator Shiori Tanaka
Persian to French translator Negin Sharif

running time 2h30 (including intermission)

production Nouveau Théâtre – Centre Dramatique National de Besançon et de Franche-Comté, Agora planning Ltd., Mehr Theatre Group
co-production Tokyo International Arts festival

A project figuring in 2008 in the programme of European Intercultural Dialogue / supported by CULTURESFRANCE (agency of the ministries of Foreign Affairs and Culture and Communications, in charge of developing links between the world’s cultures) / supported by Région of Franche-Comté (local authority), the Japan Foundation, Tokyo International Arts Festival, ONDA (National Office for Artistic Diffusion), the Credit Cooperatif (bank) and the the artistic support of Jeune Théâtre National.

Overview

Oriza Hirata, in charge of the first part of the project: Christmas Eve, a small heterogeneous group composed of the Iranian hotel owner and his wife, Japanese investors, French tourists and the hotel staff… find themselves together in a ski resort near Tehran.
These are the dramatic principles we usually find in Oriza Hirata’s playwriting: a single location where characters meet and attempt to communicate; a place where silences are more eloquent than trivial and laconic conversations; a place where time is slowing down, where cross cultural exchanges are the cause of misunderstanding. All of which contributes to the peculiar humor you find in Hirata’s writings.

Amir Reza Koohestani presented the backstage version of Oriza’s play as a counterpoint of what is staged in the first part.
A chaotic backstage where actors whisper together in 4 different languages – French, Persian, Japanese, English – between entrances and exits imposed by the fragmentation of the scenes of Oriza’s play, thus revealing relationships and conflicts. What is going on behind the scenes is obviously fictive and recalls what has been presented in the first part.

text Amir Reza Koohestani & Mahin Sadri
direction, stage, costumes, light design Amir Reza Koohestani
production manager & director’s assistant Mohammad Reza Hosseinzadeh

sound creation Ankido Darash
video & technical direction Hessam Nourani

with Baran Kosari Negar, Hassan Madjooni Shamsollah,
Attila Pessyani Fathollah, Mahin Sadri Shideh

show in persian with surtitles
surtitles technician Negar Nobakht Foghani
running time 1h20 (no interval)

production Mehr Theatre Group
coproduction Wiener Festwochen, Theaterformen, Holland Festival, Kunstenfestivaldesarts
Creation in Tehran, November 2007
with the support of the Dramatic Arts Centre (Tehran)
company & tour manager Pierre Reis

Overview

Quartet: A Journey North, is based on the real story of two Iranian murderers: a customs official who massacred several members of his family, and a well-off teenager who took her fiancé’s life. With their backs to the centre of the stage, four actors directly address the audience seated around the stage, offering four interwoven accounts from the two murderers and two relatives of the victims. A television screen above each actor allows the other actors’ faces to be seen: with movement passing from the world to the stage, and then to the screen. A documentary stage installation that takes us deep into the motivations of the human mind.

text & set design Amir Reza Koohestani
direction Amir Reza Koohestani & Mahin Sadri

with Negar Javaherian & Fatemeh Naghavi

video and technical direction Hessam Nourani
graphism Pedram Harby
music 127 band

show in Persian with surtitles
surtitles technician Mahin Sadri
running time 25 minutes

production Meeting Points 5
company & tour manager Pierre Reis

Overview

With Dry Blood and Fresh Vegetables, we are privy to the disarming casualness of a telephone conversation between a middle-aged mother and her daughter, a young woman not yet in her thirties. Set to the rhythms of seemingly unrehearsed exchanges, the marrow of life, writ large and small, unscrolls. They discuss motherhood and grandchildren, people around them, womanhood, streets in their neighbourhood, life in Tehran, and the war in Iraq.

adapted by Amir Reza Koohestani
from the original play by Nadia Ross & Jacob Wren
stage & direction Amir Reza Koohestani
director’s assistant Mahin Sadri
stage manager Pierre Reis

with Baran Baniahmadi, Saeid Changizian, Sahar Dowlatshahi, Mitra Gorji, Foad Mokhberi, Setareh Pessyani

show in persian with surtitles
surtitles technician Mahin Sadri
running time 1h20 (no interval)

production Mehr Theatre Group
company & tour manager Pierre Reis

Overview

A long table on stage, surrounded by chairs and the audience. We have not gathered here to eat but to listen stories of ordinary people. Koohestani has said that he is interested in a man as it and he does not need interpretations nor commentaries in art. That is why his theatre is simple and immobile. Recent Experiences tells the stories of one family during four generations. These are ordinary people and everyday stories which have happened on the background of the century’s big events. Koohestani’s actors do not try to be their characters but to lend their voices for them.

text, stage design, lights & direction Amir Reza Koohestani
director’s assistant Mahin Sadri
choregraphy Ehsan Hamet & Mohammad Abbasi

musics Host Of Seraphim by Dead Can Dance, Orion by Metallica,
Thousand Years by Sting
vocal composition Ali Moini
costumes Zohreh Mansour Abadi & Ali Moini

with Zohreh Mansour Abadi & Ali Moini
dancer Mohammad Abbasi

show in Persian with surtitles
surtitles technician Mahin Sadri
runing time 1h20 (no interval)

production Mehr Theatre Group
coproduction Kunstenfestivaldesarts
Created in Tehran in 2002
company & tour manager Pierre Reis

Overview

The man and woman are seated, each at the far end of a four meters long table.
Spectators in the audience sit facing one another listening to them.
They are just talking. He keeps asking: “Are you afraid when you dance on the glasses?” The more he hassles her the more she withdraws; the more he tries to trap her the more she runs away.
Dance On Glasses is the third play by Amir Reza Koohestani. His writing is new, vivid and sharp: passion for giving everything hides the desire to control it all; persistent refusal reveals the hunger to be free.
Even if it means getting lost.
It might be an Iranian story, but the battle is universal.