On Thursday, 29 May, we hosted Theatre and the Digital, a live conversation between British-Iranian theatremaker Javaad Alipoor and David Chambers, a director, writer, and producer of theatre and opera who currently teaches at Yale University.
This wide-ranging discussion covered Javaad's 'personal why' behind making theatre, his upbringing in the English city of Bradford, and the process behind his contemporary trilogy of plays.
Keep reading for an extract of this conversation – or watch the full webinar on-demand here!
David began this conversation by reflecting on the COVID-19 pandemic, when theatre and live art were both in a state of emergency. Through public letters and virtual interviews, people rallied around this art form, touting the indispensable, unique qualities of theatre.
From here, the pair began to discuss their own, personal reasons why they make theatre (both as practitioners and as people).
'For one thing', Javaad began, 'theatre is just there. A hugely diverse set of human cultures, over a hugely diverse period of history, have had something like theatre.'
He continued:
'We're living in a moment where the world is more contradictory, more difficult to understand, more radical and in flux than I think it's probably been since WW2. So then, the art form which, in its' bones, has irony and slippage, artifice and trickery, is the natural one to explore our questions.'
Read our blog with Javaad on the process of making Rich Kids...
Javaad's father came to the UK after fleeing Iran as a political refugee. 'If you are the kind of person who gets chased out of your country for your views, then by nature, you're someone who takes ideas very seriously.'
This social context is where his love for storytelling (and his interest in philosophy) emerged, following the principle that 'nothing is too good for people':
'If you're interested in political activism, a natural part of that is that you should learn something about opera, you're going to read a book recommended by the London Review of Books, and you're going to have a view on Hegel.'
In many ways, this is also at the heart of Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World, the final part of Javaad's trilogy. This show uses an investigation into the murder of Iranian singer and refugee Fereydoun Farrokhzad to illustrate how the internet shapes our sense of knowing, with Battersea Arts Centre describing it as 'a thrilling ride down the rabbit hole of Wikipedia'.
'I think one of the responsibilities of an artist is to find a way of opening up the show so that people can see themselves in it,' Javaad explained. 'I'm not just trying to give the audience information that they didn't have before. I'm trying to draw their attention to certain knots and compulsions in the way that they process information.'
Watch the trailer for Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World, available to watch on DT+...
Each part of Javaad's trilogy aims to explore 'not only what digital tools can do, but what they are doing to us', from the 'wiki rabbit-holes' of Things Hidden, to the use of Instagram in Rich Kids: A History of Shopping Malls in Tehran – 'which, by the way', David added, 'is the best title ever!'.
These plays pull from a seemingly endless list of references – and in fact, when discussing whether he had already decided on a three-play arc when writing the first installment, The Believers Are But Brothers, Javaad spoke about how the story had become 'unwieldingly big'.
It makes sense, then, that collaboration is such a vital part of Javaad's process:
'There's a 2-3 week period where I'll sit in a room with people who know, in some way or another, about the topic that I'm interested in exploring. Usually, there's at least one other artist in the room, plus journalists, scholars, whoever knows about the topic.'
'Then, we'll put the project down for a while, before another 2-3 week period. This time, we'll bring in a couple more artists who we feel are going to be central to the show. For Things Hidden, we brought in the musicians and the projectionists at this point.'
'Over that second period, we'll try to beat out the story with post-it notes and whiteboards. We end up with a huge hypothetical version of the show – and it might not be the final version we perform, but it also just might be!'
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The full trilogy of Javaad's work is available to watch on DT+, alongside additional resources:
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