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Being performed by prominent performers of Warsaw National Theatre "Birds to be killed this way"; joint art work of Iranian playwright and polish director

"Birds to be killed this way" by Hamed Darab, translated by Mina Ilchian, directed by prominent polish director, Emilia Betlegemska and performed by Warsaw National Theatre performers, will be on stage till May 22, 2014, in Poland.

In an interview with Iran Theatre website, Hamed Darab saying that the play has been performed in Poland by the name "two lives", added that "the play has three characters; the hero is a two dimensional person, so the director decided to change the name of the play and the play went on stage, by the name "two lives".
The writer of "Birds to be killed this way" explained that the play is the story of the women of the current world and went on to say that ' "Birds to be killed this way" narrates the problems of the women in the current world, from a psychoanalytical point of view and is about a two dimensional character. In fact, the characters are the two dimensions of one person. To help the audiences to have a better connection whit the play, the two personal dimensions of the hero and the hero itself were performed by three performers and say their dialogues and monologues."
Saying that the text of the play has not been the only thing that matters, Darab insisted that "having in mind the conceptual aspects of the play, it has not been written only for textual purposes; in fact, considering the postmodernist construct of the work, concept was the first thing that mattered in art work."
 Concerning the way, the play been directed by Emilia Betlegemska, darab explained that "through several discussions we had, I came to the point that we had similar comprehension of what was going on. We had the same understanding of the text. The content of my writings, despite my academic field of study, is about postmodernism; and they may seem so strange and abstract. I had no specific idea about how the play should be performed. Emilia Betlegemska had the same understanding of the work and chosen a postmodernist form, with a simple scene that has all sorts of associations with the inner coldness of the hero and a symbol of her oppressed and depressed character. According to some videos of the performance, Betlegemska has done the job very well and I'm satisfied with the result. The joint art work has been received very well by the polish audiences."
Underlining the importance of conceptual aspect of an art work, the playwright said "it's not necessary for the playwright to intervene personally in the process of performance; or for the director to accomplish whatever written by the playwright. Of course, coordination between the playwright and the director is crucial, but the main question is the realization of the concepts within the drama, and the way this job is done, is not so important. But, if the drama is to illustrate some specific philosophical concepts, the director is obliged to do that. We would better pay attention to the playwright's perspective and the concepts and ideas he or she has had in the mind, while directing and performing the play. Of course it does not mean that we should be so text-oriented because it underlines the multi-discoursive and multi-orientational atmosphere of the theatre which is the characteristic of international modern and postmodern theatre."
Emphasizing on the fact that he always try to take an universal approach in his writings, the Iranian critique and playwright went on to say that " while writing 'Birds to be killed this way', I did my best to illustrate the contrast between two aspects of the world. The main reason, audiences prefer this kind of art works is that my works necessarily are not about what is going around me and that I do not insist on my works to become localized. Women issues and problems do not limit to women around me, and Iranian women; it's a universal issue that does not belong to a specific time or a geographical location. This feature, makes my works more universal and understandable for more audiences. As a playwright who wants to reach to vast audiences, all around the world, I should adopt a universal approach toward my subjects of concern."
Saying that Iranian dramatic literature is far from being universal, Darab added that "we need to do something about this shortcoming." He further explained that "there are two main reasons that despite we having prominent figures in the field of dramatic literature, we do not have a good place in the world theatre arena; the first one is the dominance of western literature on our writers and the second one is that we do not consider the universal atmosphere of the world theatre and only write for national or regional audiences, so there is a lack of universal elements in our art work. We should take into consideration that for an art work to be international, first we need to translate it and that after that, the translation should be understandable by the world audiences. The translation should come to elements like scenery, lighting, etc."
At the end, referring to 'play writing at the era of Qajar Dynasty', a study which have been done in an university in Spain, Darab added that "the results of the study shows that our first playwrights at the Qajar era, including Mirza Malkom Khan, knew very well the social atmosphere of their time and this characteristic helped them to be accepted by the audiences abroad.