Have you ever been to a play where there is no director, no
set and a different guest as actor each night, reading a script they have never
seen before, in front of a live audience?
Where you as a member of the audience might be called upon to be part of
the play? Where the play itself is
different each night it is performed.
Well, we had no idea of the life story of Nassim
Soleimanpour when we purchased tickets for this play. We know now he is a playwright who was unable
to leave Iran, as he refused to sign up for national service. Frustrated at being denied a passport and
feeling disconnected with the outside world, he had the unique idea of writing White Rabbit, Red Rabbit. He wants to connect with people around the
world and this play is a way of doing that.
It is rather freakish how he manages to control a day of our lives
without ever leaving Tehran. He craves
however, to know who we are and how we reacted to his play. The audience is asked to email or text him
messages about their reaction to the performance and photos of the actors.
This play was first performed at the Edinburgh Festival
through a chance meeting with a couple of German and Canadian directors when
they visited Tehran for an International Theatre festival. Nassim met them while helping out as a
translator. He told them about his play, they were
intrigued and several months later it premiered in Edinburgh! The play has toured the world from Edinburgh
to Ottawa, from New York to Sao Paulo, and from San Francisco to Brisbane and
today it is in Kinsale and we are part of his audience. It is Nassim’s message in a bottle to the
world he is unable to connect with. For
me it is a validation that dreams do come true.
However, as I googled information about Soleimanpour for
this story, I read that five years after making that stand, he was diagnosed
with a serious eye condition and he is now permanently exempt from military
service and can travel to see how the play is going down. At his request, there is always a free seat
left for him at the front of the audience.
To the excitement of the audience that seat has now been filled 6 times
in different cities around the world. Today,
in Kinsale it remains empty.
Sinead Cusack (the actor for today) stands before us, a
brown sealed envelope in her hand. She
rips it open and the show starts. The
show is in the Friary Church in Kinsale and all the swear words have been
edited out at the request of the church.
Nazim is talking directly to the audience through her…
“I was born on Azar 19th,
1360 in Tehran. That’s Tehran, December
10th, 1981 in Christian years…”
Nassim continues to talk to us throughout his play. He imagines the audience, how we might react,
what we might look like. He asks us to
think how the past has made the future and how the future makes the past…! He says in the play that he always had a
dream of writing something that would set him free. He says, “it
tastes like freedom to know there are these other people in one’s play and it tastes
like freedom to be able to travel to other worlds through my words.” As a writer myself, I too am fascinated at
the thought there are people all over the world who are reading the words I
write on my blog and on my Facebook page.
There are people who write back, who ‘like’ my photographs, who post
comments on my blogs. One day those
people might even buy the book that I dream of writing, so I can connect with Nassim’s
words…they make sense to me…they excite me and give me hope for my own
future.
As part of the act, we are asked to start counting. 1,2, 3,…
He wishes to know how many people are here. There are about 210 today. The numbering is also a way for him to get
various members of the audience to enact parts of the play. Later on in the play he reflects on how he
got these various people who he refers to as ‘red rabbits’ to do as he bid,
without him even being present. He asks
us to think about obedience…about conformity.
He asks us to question what our limits are…how far we are prepared to
go? It makes me think about some of the
atrocities that have been committed in history – that are being committed today
because of obedience, because no one has the courage to make a stand.
The play also discusses the issues around suicide and the
many ways it can be committed. He has googled and found there are 17 ways to
do this. He adds an 18th,
which is his own. He says, “LIFE, is the most common way to commit
suicide. Life means choosing the longest
solution for dying. It means the struggle
for suicide through the decomposition of the body and the gradual exhaustion of
the soul”. Interesting. Are you engaged in work that is soul
destroying? Do you have the courage to
leave?
But back to the play…
We are almost at the end.
He has illustrated a story about rabbit behaviour - red rabbits, white
rabbits and a carrot at the top of a ladder.
The red rabbit races for the carrot every time. The white rabbits get a
dunking of ice-cold water instead. Over
time, the white rabbits attack the red rabbit as they are sick of getting wet but
he continues to go for the carrot. The
red rabbit has only two choices – starvation or a dunking in cold water…and he
chooses the carrot each time!
The scenario changes, and over time both the water and the
carrot are removed from the cage. New
rabbits also gradually replace the old rabbits, till eventually there is a set
of rabbits who neither knew about the dunking or the carrot. Despite these changes, the rabbits continue
to behaviour in the same way…with the red rabbit going for the imaginary carrot
and the white rabbits continuing to attack him, even though they are not
dunked.
He asks us to consider how
the past makes the future and how the future is the past.
We think about how we make choices based on past
history. Why do we never question the
stories we are told? Why do we continue
to repeat the same behaviours without ever questioning past behaviours, our
elders, the institutions that want to controls us…?
One of the threads in the play is a scenario with two
glasses of water. One has had a vial of
so called poison stirred into it by a member of the audience. The actor has switched these glasses while we
had our eyes closed so we are unaware of which glass contains the poison. Her last act involves following an
instruction to drink from one of these glasses…in the hope there was never any
poison…and n the hope that she remembers which one is the safe glass.
But there is a twist.
The last two pages of the script are to be read by a member of the
audience. She is instructed to say the
words ‘White Rabbit’ at which point she must put the script down and wait for
someone to walk forward.
There is deathly silence in the audience. We don’t know where this is going and no one
is prepared to walk up. Steven (my
partner) and I look at each other…willing the other to go. Then Steve gets up and walks toward the front
of the church. There is a small gasp
from the audience…
Nassim then talks to Steve, through the script. Here is what
he says:
“My greetings to you
who have picked up my text! I wish I
could hear your voice. I don’t know your
number, but it’s not important any more.
The important fact is that you’ve succeeded in separating yourself from
the others and climbing the steps of the carrot ladder to reach my text. I colour you red and name you the NEW RED
RABBIT.”
It’s slightly chilling but he has got us to enact the story
of the rabbits. In the end we are all just
a bunch of white and red rabbits.
Somewhere, in all of us there is that craving to be the red rabbit, to
be the standout who reaches the carrot.
But only a few among us will have the courage to do so. Today, the red rabbit is Steven.
The play ends with the original actor (now relegated to
being a white rabbit) having to make a choice as to which glass to drink from
or whether to drink at all. The
audience is asked for their opinion and they shout various instructions…don’t drink …drink from the glass on the
left…no - the right.
She picks up the glass and drinks and then lies down as if
dead.
The audience is asked to leave. Steve sits there in silence, slightly shaken
by all that has been played out before him.
The play is a unique response from a man who has grown up in
a repressive country that seeks to control and demand obedience from its
population. He has shown us there is
always a choice…but do we have the courage to make it or will we continue to
obey without question? Have you ever
bucked a trend…made a choice that was unconventional? If you haven’t, then ask
yourself…are you living life as a white rabbit?
Is it time to make that change?
Postscript
This simple act has made Steven famous in Kinsale. As I walk up to the front of the church, the
actor and others in the audience are congratulating him for his courage and
thanking him for walking forward. As we
walk to the bus stand perfect strangers stop to talk…to shake his hand. We come back to Kinsale the next day and the
same thing is repeated. Steven has now
officially had his 15 minutes of fame.
"It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities." J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.
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