Hamlet Zar: 1st Cut

"THEATRE IS THE PASS TO FREEDOM"

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.

In the Memory of Jerzy Grotowski

photo: Stifani Brothers © 2009 Goossun Art-illery

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.

Method & madness

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

– Friedrich Nietzsche

"'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

Words, words, words...

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

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

Towards another political imagination

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

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

"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

Hamlet on the sea

HamletZar mainly takes place on the sea when Hamlet is sent to England to be killed. For this reason my colleagues and I have in many occasions talked about performing HamletZar, site-specific, in a boat and sail into the sea with the audience during the performance.
It is a common belief that "in 1608 Hamlet was staged at sea by the crew of Captain Keeling's ship Dragon, so that the men would not waste their time on idleness and unlawful games or sleep."

–see E . K. Chambers: William Shakespeare: A Study of Facts and Problems,
London, Oxford University Press 1930, Vol. II, p 335

Also see this: Hamlet aboard the (Red) Dragon

To Hell with Irrelevant Art!

"... not true requirements, but the requirements of Truth; not the interest of the pro*******t, but the interest of Human Nature, of man in general, who belongs to no c***s, has no reality, who exists only in the misty realm of philosophical fantasy."

–Carl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto, p. 41

Over the years my interest in arts and in theatre particularly has changed. I am not interested in art as means of expression anymore. Today I am interested in art only if it is relevant to life in an im-mediate manner and only if it can better life even a tiny bit; even if it is a hopeless attempt as verbalized by Das Beckwerk's statement: "hopeless but necessary attempt to daily intervene in world history."

This notion has influenced the project, HamletZar in various ways and has expanded the field of research in the agenda of the project, most specifically a process where we endeavor to explore the possibilities of combining two principal notions of twentieth century's theatre practice, namely Theatre Anthropology and Theatre of the Oppressed.
This is an attempt to avoid the concentrated and largely isolated process of craft losing connection with our daily, real life and keep away from falling into the trap of "the misty realm of philosophical fantasy."

Otherwise what is the point? It is extremely difficult to make it possible to do theatre; it is so at least for me. If theatre doesn't make my life better, richer and more joyous, to hell with it.
As Malcolm X has said: "When you have a philosophy or a gospel–I don't care whether it's a religious gospel, a political gospel, an economic gospel or a social gospel–if it's not going to do something for you and me right here and right now–to hell with that gospel!"

NOTE: Pro*******t and c***s are of course "proletariat" and "class" respectively. I think it is extremely important, when we read Carl Marx today, that we demystify his terminology, which is the product of the period he lived in, in order to understand the profound humane and philosophical aspect of his though. In the above mentioned quote Carl Marx is criticizing the German socialists for being influenced by "completely emasculated" French communist literature without having experienced the real historical changes and thus indulging themselves in illusory rhetoric. However the essence of what he says goes beyond the specific problem he is addressing.

Altering the text of Hamlet

Cedric Watts, in the short and interesting introduction he has written to Hamlet, cleverly points out that "Hamlet is delighted to add lines to The Mousetrap to give it topical relevance; and when Polonius objects that the recitation about Pyrruhs is too long, Hamlet immediately replies: "it shall to the barber's with your beard."

–Hamlet, Wordsworth Classics, p. 24

That is exactly what we are going to do with Shakespeare's text in HamletZar: "It shall to the barber's." And we'll add lines in order to give it a "topical relevance;" as Peter Brook has said, to relate it "to our lives."

Hamlet: Machiavellian villain

"The new type of villain which we meet in Elizabethan drama is an image of some interest. I say "new type" because we must all deprecate the tendency to use the words "Machiavellian villain" when we mean merely a great or ruthless villain. By a "Machiavellian" villain we ought to mean one who circumvents his victims by cunning and hypocrisy—like Machiavelli’s ideal prince. Thus Kyd’s Lorenzo and Shakespeare’s Iago are Machiavellian; Tamburlain is not. The cunning villain is so useful to dramatists and has so long been part of their stock-in-trade that we tend to take him for granted. But the typical villains of medieval literature are not often cunning. They are seldom cleverer than the good character.”

—C. S. Lewis, English Literature in the Sixteen century, p. 51, Oxford University Press, 1944

Note: Despite of being the protagonist of Shakespeare’s play, Hamlet possesses many of the characteristics of so-called the “Machiavellian villain.” Although The Prince had not been translated into English until 1640, Machiavelli was widely famed to the Elizabethan dramatists as the devilish villain. What they knew as “Machiavellism” was based on a French book written by Gentillet, called Anti Machiavel which provided a tremendously useful instrument to form a model for cunning villain who circumvents his victim by hypocrisy.

Hamlet & Kierkegaards

“It would be the task for a poet to represent this agonizing self-contradiction in a demonic man who is not able to get along without a confidant and not able to have a confidant …”

–Søren Kierkegaard, Sickness Unto Death, p. 56

Dance/music healing in Bible

”David and all the house of Israel played before the LORD on all manner of instruments made of fir wood, even on harps, and on psalteries, and on timbrels, and on cornets, and on cymbals. […] David was displeased, because the LORD had made a breach upon Uzzah. […] And David danced before the LORD with all his might; […] And David offered burnt offerings and peace offerings before the LORD.”

—Old Testament, 2 Samuel, chap. 6

Craig on Shakespeare

"Hamlet has not the nature of a stage representation. Hamlet and the other plays of Shakespeare have so vast and so complete a form when read, that they can but lose heavily when presented to us after having undergone stage treatment. That they were acted in Shakespeare's day proves nothing."

–Edward Gordon Craig, On the Art of Theatre, p 143

Brook on Shekaspeare

"Our greatest problem in England where we have the best possibility in the world for presenting our greatest author is just this–the relating of these works to our lives."

–Peter Brook, preface to Jan Kott's Shakespeare, Our Contemporary