GOOSSUN گوسان

Hamlet Zar: 1st Cut

2010-03-12T21:20:00.001+01:00

ANAGRAM (108)

2010-03-10T22:17:00.001+01:00

Broken teeth
Sweaty bed sheets

… a message of
love
it is not
to be loved…

I can’t ignore the nightmare we woke up in

Daily

2010-03-01T16:36:00.004+01:00

I have always envied those who can write everyday. I mean writing as in "writing" which does not include letters, e-mails, application forms, text messages etc.

What is it that make "writing" so special? Why are book so important? What does make "writing" essential? Why writ...

ANAGRAM (107)

2009-12-22T00:51:00.002+01:00

A poet
Born when I fall asleep
Murdered by alarm clock.

ANAGRAM (106)

2009-11-09T21:41:00.000+01:00

I have no graves to visit.

شرمِ تکرارِ خویشتن

2009-08-27T22:08:00.003+02:00

This is a Persian translation of a fragment from Milan Kundera's The Curtain; first published on Radio Zamaneh.

شرمِ تکرارِ خویشتن

نوشته یِ میلان کوندرا
ترجمه یِ وحید عوض‌زاده

در یکی از اولین سفرهایم به پراگ پس از متلاشی‌ شدنِ حکومتِ کمونیستی در سالِ ۱۹۸۹، یکی از دوستانم که تمامِ آن سال‌ها را آن‌جا زنده‌گی کرده بود به من گفت: ما به یک بالزاک احتیاج داریم. چون چیزی که اکنون شاهداش هستی بازسازی‌یِ یک جامعه‌یِ سرمایه‌داری‌ست با همه‌یِ شقاوت و حماقت‌اش؛ با وحشی‌گری‌یِ کلاه‌بردارها و تازه ـ به ـ دوران ـ رسیده‌ها. حماقتِ کاسب‌کارانه جایِ حماقتِ ایدئولوژیک را گرفته است. ولی خیره کننده‌گی‌یِ این تجربه‌یِ جدید این است که خاطره‌یِ آن دورانِ همچنان در ذهنِ ما زنده است-هر دویِ این تجربه‌ها در هم تنیده‌اند و مانندِ دورانِ بالزاک، تاریخْ بلبشویِ غریبی برپا کرده.
دوستم ماجرایِ پیر‌مردي را برای‌ام تعریف کرد که روزی روزگاری جای‌گاهی والا در حزب [ـِ کمونیست] داشت. این مرد دخترش را بیست و پنج سال پیش‌تر به پسرِ یک بورژوایِ معروف شوهر داد که همه‌یِ دارایی‌یِ خانواده‌گی‌شان توسطِ دولت ضبط شده بود. و پیرمرد از نفوذاش استفاده کرد و شغلی برایِ دامادش به عنوانِ هدیه‌یِ ازدواج دست و پا کرده بود.
امروزه روز پیرمرد در تنهایی و انزوا روزگار می‌گذراند. خانواده‌یِ دامادش دارائی‌هایِ سابقاً دولتی‌شده‌شان را پش گرفته‌اند و دخترش از بابتِ پدرِ کمونیست‌اش احساسِ سرشکسته‌گی می‌کند و فقط جرأت دارد در خفا به دیدن‌ پدرش برود. دوستم می‌خندد و می‌گوید:‌ «ملتفتی؟ این ماجرا کلمه به کلمه عینِ داستانِ بابا گوری‌یو۱ است.» داستانِ مردِ قدرت‌مندي که در دورانِ وحشت‌سالاری۲ برای دختران‌اش شوهرانی از «طبقه دشمن» دست ـ و ـ پا می‌کند و بعد‌تر در دورانِ بازگردانی‌یِ سلطنت۳ دیگر نمی‌تواند دختران‌اش را در انظارِ عمومی ملاقات کند.
ما مدتی به این ماجرا خندیدیم. امروز دوباره به آن خنده فکر می‌کنم.دقیقاً به چه چیزی می‌خندیدیم و چرا؟ آیا آن آپاراتچی۴‌یِ پیرْ مضحک بود، چون تجربه‌یِ کسِ دیگری را تکرار می‌کرد؟ اما این خودِ تاریخ بود که خودش را تکرار می کرد، نه آن پیرمرد. و چنین چیزی لازمه‌اش این است که تاریخ بوئی از شرم نبرده باشد؛ بوئی از شرم، هوش و سلیقه. این بی سلیقه‌گی‌یِ تاریخ بود که ما را به خنده انداخت.
این ماجرا مرا به پیشنهادِ دوست‌ام برمی‌گرداند. درست است، این دوره‌ای که مردم دارند در بوهیمیا۵ از سر می‌گذرانند بالزاک را با فریاد به خود می‌خواند؛ شاید. شاید خواندنِ رمان‌هایی درباره‌یِ بازگشتِ سرمایه‌داری با شخصیت‌هایِ متعدد و داستانی فراگیر، مانندِ رمان‌هایِ بالزاک برای‌ِ مردمِ چِک روشن‌گرباشد. ولی هیچ رمان‌نویسی که لیاقتِ عنوانِ رمان‌نویس را داشته باشد چنین رمانی را نخواهد نوشت. نوشتنِ یک کمدی‌یِ انسانی۱یِ دیگر کاملاً مضحک است. چرا که هرچند تاریخ (تاریخِ مردمان) ممکن است با بی‌سلیقه‌گی خودش را تکرار کند، تاریخِ یک هنر تابِ‌ تکرار را نخواهد داشت. هنر آینه‌ای نیست که بتوان در آن همه‌یِ بالا و پائینِ تاریخ رابا همه‌یِ دگره‌ها۶ و تکرارهایِ بی‌پایان‌اش ثبت کرد. هنر مانندِ یک دسته نوازنده‌گانِ دهاتی که خادمانه پا ـ به ـ پایِ تاریخ رژه می‌روند نیست. هنر کارش آفریدنِ تاریخِ خودش است. آن‌چه نهایتاً از اروپا باقی خواند ماند تاریخِ تکرار شونده‌اش نخواهد بود که در خودش مُعرفِ هیچ ارزشی نیست. تنها چیزی که اقبالِ اندکی استقامت را خواهد داشت تاریخِ هنرِ اروپاست.

* ترجمه شده از بخشِ یکمِ کتابِ پرده.

یادداشت‌ها:
۱- رمانِ‌ Pére Goriot بخشی از مجموعه‌یِ کمدی‌یِ انسانی‌ La Comédie Humaine یِ اُنوره دُ بالزاک
Reign of Terror-۲
Restoration-۳
۴-کارمندِ رسمی‌یِ اداراتِ کمونیستی apparatchik
۵-ناحیه‌ای در جمهوری‌یِ چِک
Variations-۶

"THEATRE IS THE PASS TO FREEDOM"

2009-08-01T15:12:00.009+02:00

During a research trip to Toronto Vahid was interviewed by Sue Balint* after the Per–expressivity and Scenic Presence workshop. This interview has first been published in the Wheel Me Out magazine:

Goossun Art-illery’s Artistic Director Vahid began his theatre career in Iran and has since studied with several masters of Western and Oriental theatre including Eugenio Barba, Augusto Boal and Akira Matsui. Here, he talks about the unique training workshops he’s conducted with performers in London, Copenhagen and Toronto.

In recent years, you’ve shifted your focus from creating performances to training. How much of this is process for you, and how much is product?
The process is a product in itself and vise versa. For me the only difference is whether you want to present what you are doing to outsiders or you’re doing something, which is not for presentation (yet, as it were.) Otherwise, both things are the same for me. Fixing a performance for presentation doesn’t necessarily mean that the process has ended. One thing is certain: the work can always be improved and so can one’s skills.
You make a performance, you perform it for five nights or tour it for two years, and then you stop. But you don’t stop the whole process of your vocation. Or rather you should not! Theatre for me is not about “show business” or putting on performances. It’s a lifestyle. You do something because you have to, you can’t help yourself. Sometimes you have a chance to put it on stage and make it public, sometimes you don’t. It doesn’t change the intention of doing it.

That said, the reason for not having produced any performances in the recent years was that I did not want to make a performance under just any condition. I work in a certain way and the circumstances I was in were not suitable for producing a performance in the way I wanted to. It was not a “shift” from making performances to training as you put it. It was rather a choice in order to maintain a sense of integrity.

How do you describe what you do?
What I do is called “theatre” for the lack of better word. It’s very difficult to explain what it exactly is since I am not interested in theatre as enactment or show business. What I do is what you saw in this workshop. Of course there is a strong ancestral link to Stanislavski, Edward Gordon Craig, Grotowski, Odin Teatret and thus a relation to “theatre.” But what does theatre mean to these reformers? For me what connect these theatre-makers are two things: their technical research on the craft and their vision.

Edward Gordon Craig says, “They perhaps asked why you wanted to go on the stage, and you could give no reasonable answer because you wanted to do that which no reasonable answer could explain; in other words, you wanted to fly.” There you got your answer. It’s an inconcrete and ambiguous answer but so is the theatre. Basically you want to fly, but you’re unable to. Hence “theatre” for me is ultimately an endeavour to make something impossible possible; a rebellion against our inability and our human limitation.

But if you were to be concrete?
Then I would say what I do is to “diagnose” what is blocking our imagination and to turn the obstacles into possibilities. And all this is done on the context of performer’s craftsmanship in an organized performance situation. That is as concrete as it can get.

Diagnosing the individual performer?
What I refer to as “diagnosing” is to find out what is blocking each performer’s imagination and how the performer can overcome the obstacles. In that sense it is an individual process. However this will not remain individual entirely. We focus on individual in order to redefine our relation with others. In training the main goal is to set the performer’s imagination free and there is no one predetermined method to do this; it changes from individual to individual.

And it might not resonate with everyone.
Sure! It might not. However there is a very good criteria for whether it works or not and that is the second day of the work. If the participants show up on the second day and want to continue, that’s good enough for me. It shows that they are willing to push forward and challenge themselves.

Tell me about the importance of body memory in your work.
You’ve heard me say many times, “let your body memorize it” or “let your body remember.” What we call memory is a complex process of remembering and forgetting. Memories are not forgotten so much as pushed back. They are kept in our body. As Grotowski says the body has no memory; the body is the memory.
Training partially is a way to access the subconscious through the conscious, creating, memorizing and reproducing multiple tensions in the body that invoke forgotten memories, associations, emotions etc. This makes sense like déjà vu does. There’s “that thing” that is invoked that might not make sense rationally, but we recognize it as a “memory.” We take it for what it is.

Your relationship with each of the performers feels quite reciprocal. A “teacher” could stay very much on the outside. Watching you work, it doesn’t feel like that.
You are certainly right. And that’s why I don’t like the word teacher. Teacher means “transmitter”. It’s normally someone who has already acquired a box of knowledge and is now opening the box, like a chocolate box, and giving pieces to people. That’s not what I do. I prefer the Italian word, formatore. It’s, as you said, learning in a reciprocal way. All of us together are trying to learn to learn. So you learn some new ways, devices, tools to learn more. That’s basically what happens here. And that’s why it’s a never-ending process. This is due to the fact that ultimately there are no limits to our imagination. The deeper the performers explores their imagination, they’re going to trigger my imagination in a deeper level as well. It all evolves. The better they get in doing that, the more skill they get, the more focused and concentrated they become, it gets more challenging for me, because then I have to catch up with them and open up my own imagination. Thus it opens more doors and possibilities for all of us.

You create a very specific environment in the training room. It’s intentionally separate from the outside world.
Theatre to me is the opposite of the social life. The choice toward a different way of life, a different way of connecting with each other requires a different setting. And that’s why upon entering the training room we have to change the way we walk, the way we behave, the way we talk to one another. The behavior of each individual entering the space should indicate that this space is special, not just like anywhere else. In order to do what you see here, you have to somewhat organize your life differently. Every second is new and that needs an absolute presence and awareness, a receptivity, to be very open to things happening around you if you want to be creative.

There’s a lovely sort of freedom in that.
Yes, it is. Theatre is the path to freedom. In order to start anything creative, one ought to become organic. Much of what we do here is in order to render that organicity, which means going back to the child, back to the animal. The conventions of social life are established either based on fear or need, which are conservative by default and hence limiting. In order to become creative, we have to go opposite and somehow go back. It’s not possible to chronologically go back, but you restore those things you have suppressed and then try to build from there. Basically what we do here is trying to deconstruct the social behavior, the daily behavior. To do that we cut it to pieces, in a laboratory space like this.
That might be ultimately what art is. Decroux, the mime master, said that art is “decomposition of the natural and re-composition of the ideal.” It’s like demolishing a house and building anew a building with the bricks taken from under the debris.

*Sue Balint is Director of Development for Modern Times Stage Company as well as a playwright and interdisciplinary artist working in Toronto.

Beats or God

2009-07-10T22:22:00.003+02:00

"The man who is isolated–who is unable to share in the benefits of political association, or has no need to share because he is already self-sufficient–is no part of the polis and must therefore be either a beast or a god."

– Aristotle, Politics

ANAGRAM (105)

2009-07-10T22:19:00.001+02:00

Emotions are commotions.

In the Memory of Jerzy Grotowski

2009-07-08T12:17:00.002+02:00

Towards the end of the first residency of HamletZar: Exodus we had an open session where a small group of people came to see our training. For that day we made a tribute to Grotowski, an installation in the Black Room of Odin Teatret through which the guests would pass to get to the White Room where we worked.

2009-07-07T10:22:00.008+02:00

"My problem is not to explore my self-consciousness to see if I am free or not: my problem is to analyze reality to see how one can free oneself."

– Michel Foucault

Method & madness

2009-05-30T09:15:00.001+02:00

"There is always some madness in love. But there is always, also, some method in madness."

– Friedrich Nietzsche

2009-05-27T02:36:00.002+02:00

"[In] the social system in which I live [...] my obligation is not to make political declarations, but to make holes in the wall. [...] Art has always been the effort to confront oneself with the insufficiency, and by this very fact, art has always been complementary to social reality [...] it is not goodwill which will save the work, but it is mastery. Obviously when mastery is here, appears the question of heart. Heart without mastery is shit."

– Jerzy Grotowski, Tu es le fils de quelqu'un

The Water Snake Drinks Turns Poison

2009-05-05T21:41:00.000+02:00

2009-03-09T21:03:00.001+01:00

"'To select an author's play, does not mean to share his views."
–Grotowski quoting Meyerhold in the program to one his early productions, God of Rain

DD DANSEN 2009 Music Video

2009-03-03T12:34:00.000+01:00

AZDAHAK

2009-02-25T12:13:00.000+01:00

2009-02-14T21:40:00.002+01:00

Everyone at some point has at least once wondered, what will happen to us when we die. Nothing is certain about what happens to us after death except that we will cease asking that question.

ANAGRAM (104)

2008-12-19T09:46:00.001+01:00

If I ever had to be someone else than myself
I'd be Albert Camus
Dying like James Dean.

Words, words, words...

2008-12-18T23:42:00.003+01:00

"Every Hamlet has a book in his hand. What book does the modern Hamlet read?

– Jan Kott, Shakespeare, Our Contemporary, p. 68

Grotowski at Work

2008-12-10T15:08:00.001+01:00

This video has recently been uploaded on YouTube by Biagagli. It is a Polska TV program seemingly made after Grotowski's death 1999. It is a rough outline of his life.

What is most interesting for me in this video, is the part where Grotowski is leading the vocal exercises at the Theatre Laboratory of 13 Rows; the way he conducts the performer with his hands, indicating various places on body where he wants the performance to use as resonator.

I guess this fragment is from the Mike Elster's documentary, Letters from Opole. (If my memory doesn't decive me; I've seen that film seven years ago.) Elster was a film student in Poland in the 60's and decided to make a documentary about Theatre Laboratory after he was invited to Opole by Eugenio Barba and saw the work of Grotowski. He became instrumental in Grotowski's career not only by making the very first film about his work but also through introducing Grotowski to Peter Brook in 1965. (see E. Barba, Land of Ashes and Diamonds, p. 60.)

I hope someone uploads Letters from Opole on YouTube as well.

Baudrillard, Scorsese & Brecht

2008-12-08T15:06:00.007+01:00

I was looking for something in Jean Baudrillard's Fragments and I landed on this: "Given that it is better to be killed by a bullet intended for you rather than a stray one, and given that there are many more stray bullets than ones which reach their target, is it better to be one of the terrorists or one of the victims?"

It immediately reminded me of Frank Costello's line in Scorsese's The Departed: “When I was your age, they would say you could become cops or criminals. What I'm saying is this: When you're facing a loaded gun, what's the difference?”

Just wonder, is Baudrillard thinking like a gangster mob or the gangsters (the "wise guys" as Lefty in Donnie Brasco called them) are actually acting on a more justifiable philosophical basis? What is crime when the authoritative body–state if you like–who draws the line between "legal" and "illegal" has blood on its hand up to elbow?

I hear Brecht shouting from behind: “What is the crime of robbing a bank compared with the crime of founding one.”

Towards another political imagination

2008-12-01T15:08:00.010+01:00

Ryszard Cieslak at work 1980

I heard Eugenio Barba once saying that "the greatest revolution is revolution against our own laziness." This is an essential principle for theatre training. Training is a fight against laziness. In this sense laziness for me is the opposite of concentration. Concentration in training is the basis of setting one's imagination free. Freeing one's imagination is necessarily political.
That is why I have borrowed Foucaut's phrase as one of HamletZar's motto:"Towards another political imagination."

"We have to construct another political thought, another political imagination and teach anew the vision of future."

– Michel Foucaut in J. Afary & K Anderson, Foucaut and Iranian Revolution, p. 185

I recall Philip Gaulier saying in a video interview "I teach theatre, I teach freedom" which is in essence the same as constructing another political imagination. Doesn't Étienne Decroux also touches upon the same notion when he says art is "decomposition of the natural and re-composition of the ideal?"

Brook on Grotowski

2008-11-29T20:32:00.000+01:00

Jerzy Grotowski & Peter Brook in Shiraz Art Festival, Iran 1971

"The Theatre is not an escape, a refuge. A way of life is a way to life. does that sound like a religious slogan? It should do."

–Peter Brook, preface to Towards a Poor Theatre, p. 12

Etymology of the name Hamlet

2008-11-28T03:21:00.000+01:00

"incidentally, the name "Amleth" means "Dimwit" or "Idiot"; so the most intelligent character in Shakespeare's works inherits an aptly paradoxical name."

–Cedric Watts, introduction to Hamlet, p. 15