Keivan Kasirian: I got away from everything that overshadowed listening to Rhinoceros

Keivan Kasirian, journalist, film critic and theater director, recently has directed "Rhinoceros Reading", in which the play "Rhinoceros" with four Farsi translations by Jalal Al-e-Ahmad, Pari Saberi, Media Kashigar and Sahar Davari has been performed.

 

Many believe that stage reading is mostly done for works that have been recently translated, so the audience can be familiar with the play or as an option for future performances; But you chose the popular play.

The play "Rhinoceros" is one of the most famous contemporary modern plays, and the simple reason for this choice is our current situation, which is similar to the play "Rhinoceros". Of course, I also had a memory with some of the cast of this stage reading from the performance of this play at Shiraz University, which had influence in choosing it.

You used four different translations instead of one. Was there a particular difference between them?

Yes, these translations had strange linguistic differences. Differences that sometimes made us refer to the original text.On the other hand, I preferred the play to have more variety. Therefore, the role of the actors changed every night, and each actor experienced different roles on stage, which was considered a new challenge and experience.

Wasn't it difficult to use this number of texts and actors and change their roles every night of the play reading?

Directing this play is difficult in any form. We performed this show as a play reading performance, but a lot of rehearsals were done to reach the required standards. The play is hard and difficult to understand. For this reason, at the beginning, we spent a lot of time analyzing the play and the characters.