A Review of the Performance

by Mohammad Hasan Khodaiee

This evening I went to see the performance “A Guide to Tehran City Theatre.” A tour for witnessing “going to the City Theatre.” Everything begins with complete seriousness, and as it proceeds with precise, technical explanations and the actor’s seemingly scientific and rigorous delivery, the audience gradually realizes that the claims being made do not align with reality. Everything is fabricated, actively deceiving those spectators who, together with the actor, step outside the Qashqai Hall and begin an artistic and historical circumambulation around this national theatre complex.

The signs, symbols, and statues surrounding the complex, once again in the tour-guide narration of the Vaheh Group, entangle truth and falsehood, confronting the audience with a fabricated history that lacks nothing when compared to the complex’s authenticated history. Through constant references to “Mir-e Honar,” the narrative playfully renders itself scientific and credible. As if snowfall in the summer of ’91, or the design of the “Flute Player” statue by Bahman Mohasses, were deliberately conceived and constructed to eventually disintegrate, the tour guide shows the audience a notebook containing Bahman Mohasses’s explanations on the matter.

“A Guide to Tehran City Theatre” points to a rupture—a pause that, through wit and playfulness, narrates the decay, erosion, and marginalization of this temple and central institution of the country’s theatre.