A Report on the British Premiere of Death of Yazdgerd: A Cross-cultural Adaptation?

Abstract

In the spring semester of 2010, the students of the module “Non Western Performances” at Loughborough University were directed by Sudipto Chatterjee to stage the UK premiere of Bahram Beyzaie's canonical play, Death of Yazdgerd (1979). The play, which was initially supposed to be a student-led workshop as part of the module's practice, took a life of its own and turned into a full-blown production. The production consisted of all the registered students of the module who formed the cast and the crew, the main tutor and director Sudipto Chatterjee, the co-tutor and dramaturge Proshot Kalam) and the two technical tutors (Dave Hill and Mark Simpson). The present essay is an attempt to analyze the cross-cultural aspects and the practical approaches undertaken by the crew for the production of the play.

Notes

¹Rustom Bharucha, Theatre and the World: Performance and the Politics of Culture (London, 1993), 1.

²Please see Appendix 1 for the playbill and further information on the production.

³Kobena Mercer, “Interculturality Is Ordinary,” Intercultural Arts Education and Municipal Policy, ed. Ria Lavrijsen (Amsterdam, 1997), 42.

⁴Mercer, “Interculturality,” 42.

⁵Bahram Beyzaie, Death of Yazdgerd, trans. Manuchehr Anvar (Tehran, 1980).

⁶For a study of the play, see Saeed Talajooy, “Myth and History in Iranian Drama: Bahram Beyzaie,” in Historiography and Iran in Comparative Perspective, ed. Ali Ansari (London, 2013).

⁷Helen Gilbert and Jacqueline Lo, “Toward a Topography of Cross-Cultural Theatre Praxis,” TDR: The Drama Review 46, no. 3 (2002): 32.

⁸Gilbert and Lo, “Toward a Topography,” 32.

⁹Gilbert and Lo, “Toward a Topography,” 34.

¹⁰Proshot Kalami, “Interview with Sudipto Chatterjee,” May 6, 2011.

¹¹Gilbert and Lo, “Toward a Topography,” 35.

¹²Gilbert and Lo, “Toward a Topography,” 36.

¹³Patrice Pavis, Theatre at the Crossroad of Culture (London and New York, 1992), 191–92.

¹⁴Kalami, “Interview with Sudipto Chatterjee”.

¹⁵For more information on Bunraku please see Benito Ortolani, The Japanese Theatre: From Shamanistic Ritual to Contemporary Pluralism (Princeton, NJ, 1995).

¹⁶Of course, as specified above, the Miller, the Woman, and the Girl take turns to represent the King at different stages of the play.

¹⁷Kalami, “Interview with Sudipto Chatterjee.”

¹⁸Kalami, “Interview with Sudipto Chatterjee.”

¹⁹Gilbert and Lo, “Toward a Topography,” 31.

²⁰Although the students were provided with the information, they realised that the passing is not the focal point of the play. Whether the information had helped them or not is a question that remains to be asked from the actors. However, it is revealing to know the type of curiosity that this group of young British actors had in the subject.

²¹Rustom Bharucha, Politics of Cultural Practice: Thinking Through Theatre in an Age of Globalization (Middletown, CT, 2000), 21.

²²Gilbert and Lo, “Toward a Topography,” 35.

²³Kalami, “Interview with Sudipto Chatterjee.”

²⁴The performance at UCL became possible with the support of Iran Heritage Foundation and UCL Mellon Programme provided through Dr Saeed Talajooy, the organizer of the UCL Symposium on Bahram Beyzaie.

²⁶Kalami, “Interview with Sudipto Chatterjee.”

²⁵Bharucha, Theatre and the World, 1.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Proshot Kalami

Proshot Kalami is a research fellow at the Free University of Berlin. She has taught Iranian drama and cinema and comparative literature at American and British universities.