Once Upon a Time…
Nassim
October 4 — October 27, 2024
I try not to know too much about a movie or a play before I see it; I like to form my own impressions. But often it’s difficult to duck the media onslaught in advance of a premiere.
In the case of Nassim, I knew it was more performance piece than conventional play. I knew that playwright Nassim Soleimanpour offers a one-person show that features a different special guest at each performance.
The evening before the Press Opening I had dinner with a theater-friend who’d seen Nassim in previews. No spoiler alerts, but she wondered who’d be special guest for the press. “Maybe Michael Maso?” (recently retired Managing Director of The Huntington and Boston theater hero).
“I don’t think so,” I said. “I’d go with Jared Bowen.” (WGBH Arts Reporter and all-around-town handsome, witty man.)
“Oh, that would be great,” my companion replied. “Give the press one of their own up on the stage.”
The following evening, as I entered the Wimberley Theater at The Calderwood, I smiled in satisfaction. A table sitting on the mostly black, mostly empty stage contained a cardboard box with the name: Jared Bowen.
The premise behind Nassim is simple as it is effective. When the stage manager concludes the usual pre-show housekeeping announcements, he introduces the evening’s special guest. Jared comes on stage and gets his instructions: open the box, follow the directions, and perform the script. No prior exposure; no rehearsal. Oh, and by the way, the script is 456 pages long.
Stage Manager leaves. Jared opens box. Finds a single piece of paper that directs him to read whatever comes on the screen. A large screen illuminates, and Jared starts to read. It’s awkward. It’s funny. Jared figures out he’s only supposed to say normal case words out loud (italics are stage directions). Whoever is manipulating the illuminated pages has a sense of humor.
After a while, the script requires Jared to try to pronounce words in Farsi, which proves farcical. But the man behind the screen, much as the man behind the curtain in Oz, proves to be gentler, kinder than one might imagine. A simple tale emerges, about a boy who lives in a house with a balcony, whose mother reads him stories of a little bear. Eventually, Jared is invited to meet the man manipulating the screen. He leaves the stage and appears onscreen, with a greenscreen background of Iran. Soon thereafter, both Jared and Nassim Saleimanpour himself come to front stage. It’s difficult to explain why this is all so funny, yet it is. The audience is in hysterics. Except when we swoon in empathy.
Farsi and English are languages on far ends of the comprehension spectrum. Yet the story, simple as it is, is a universal one. And therein lies the genius of the piece. A playwright from a country that we are more or less conditioned to hate, a place where the populace is indoctrinated to hate us, threads a lovely needle of commonality.
Nassim has been produced all over the world. But not in Iran. None of Soleimanpour’s plays have ever played there. Yet, by the end of Nassim, Jared Bowen is telling Nassim’s mother a fairy tale, over the phone, in Farsi, because what Nassim truly wants, is for his mother to hear his play in her native tongue.
It’s a bit of a puzzle, why this play is banned in Iran. It’s not political in the least. But scratch the surface, or tickle the little bear, and you uncover the most subversive of all messages. That communicating with the enemy is good. That you might actually become friends. In a world where the powerful maintain control by mongering against ‘the other,’ where would the powerful be if we all just decided to be friends?
I’m particularly attuned to how theater can (must) be different from whatever’s available on a screen in order to be relevant in our world. Screens are ubiquitous; content is easy, cheap, and plentiful. So why go to theater? When I see a set whose primary element is a large screen a large screen, I shudder. I came to see live! Yet I know that my eyes will be drawn to whatever is projected over the physical action on stage.
Nassim tweaked my worries. A lot goes on the screen, but everything on the screen is live. The weakest portion of the show was when Jared went backstage and all we had was screen. When he returned, and Nassim joined, and the screen manipulation became visible, the fusion between theater and: You Tube; Instagram; you name it; was closer than I’ve witnessed.
Days after the performance, I’m hard pressed to deliver an elevator speech about the plot of Nassim. But I keep thinking about it. Which is cool.
