Notebook of Alireza Koushk-Jalali on 'Waiting for Adolf'
A Witness to Three Generation of Audience in Hall
The play 'Waiting for Adolf' – and adaptation of 'What's in a Name?' by Alexandre de La Patellière and Matthieu Delaporte –is translated and directed by Alireza Koushk-Jalali. It had its last performance on Friday. Koushk-Jalali sent a note for the audience from the city of Cologne, Germany.
It have been tried a lot in my plays such as 'M. Ibrahim and the Flowers of the Koran', 'The God of Carnage', 'The Gronholm Method' and 'Postman: Pablo Neroda' that they have not connect only to a certain class of the society. You are seeing the fruits of this effort tonight. It is a proud for the members of our creative, organized and studious group that 'Waiting for Adolf' is set the record of the number of audience at Nazerzadeh Kermani Hall in the current Iranian year, which has started in March 2017, Iran Theater reported.
I was present in some performances of 'Waiting for Adolf' in the hall, witnessing audiences of three generations. One evening, the laughter of two seven and eight years old kids doubled the energy in the hall, where old mothers and fathers and numerous young people watched the play, most of them joyfully.
I witnessed a housewife who had come to the playhouse for the first time, a taxi driver, a lawyer, a member of the scientific board of Sharif University of Technology, a bank employee, an artist, an intellectual, a student and construction worker were in the hall and every single one of them could connect to the play and were happy.
Theater in Europe has reached this level for years that the art should be for the common people not for a certain class of the society. The popular art is the cultural backbone of the societies and one the reason the society and culture intertwine.
The common people who listen to Beethoven do march less.
The common people who watch Shakespeare do shout less.
The common people who know Picasso do throw acid less.
The common people who know Ferdowsi do behave more wisely.
So we should encourage them to come to art events more.
Bertolt Brecht said in Germany 110 years ago: From the start it has been the theatre's business to entertain people ... it needs no other passport than fun.
The element of fun is almost destroyed in the intellectual plays. The genuine art for the common people does not exist in Iran. This is a tsunami, which is invading our theater.
It seems theater wants to be an art of certain people. This is the highest risk, threatening the society and its results will be ignorant people. And ignorant common people can be influenced by everything.
I will sent my gratitude again to the perseverance of members of the group on the stage and behind-the-scene. I will hug you tightly and wish you another performance of the sort in the next year.
Alireza Koushk-Jalali
Cologne