A Show on Human Relationships Go Cold

Aal-e Aaqa has adopted a different approach toward Ionesco in her new performance. She is not completely loyal to the text and has cut some dialogue, changing the last part of the play into musical. However, she has preserved the structure.

Parinza Aal-e Aaqa has direction of “Bread Crumbs” and “Empress of Stable” as well as puppet shows in her six-year-old career. Her “The Lesson” is performed absurd, modern and sophisticated. It received contradictory reviews from critics.

She talks about her show more.

Why have you decided to direct “The Lesson”?

I have two reasons. First the incorrect educational system that we have, which is based an old model. Second is poor relationships among contemporary humans. The two reasons tempted me to work on this play again. Given that I was familiar with the play of “The Lesson” and have conducted lots of studies on it, I preferred to perform it again.

 

Do you mean your show is a criticism of the country’s educational system? What is your approach to such criticism of the educational system? What are you willing to say?

I am not to chant any slogan. I do not want to say my show is chasing this or that slogan. I leave the audience to have his/her interpretation freely. They can have any interpretation that they want. What bothers me is the low knowledge of students of their fields. I think the highest level of education is universities. I have been teaching at universities over the past five years. Unfortunately- I hope not to insult anyone- many students are illiterate. They do not even know why they are in the universities. They have no educational background. This shows that the twelve years of school has no function for their lives or thoughts. This is one of my concerns for choosing this play.

Do you think higher education has no function or benefit for the students?

Neither academic education nor high school, they have had no advantages for them. I have high school diploma in mathematics but I am unable to solve any integral equation. That means these lessons have not been taught to me well and I have not learned them deeply.

 

That means the crime scene in the show is implicitly refer to fruitless graduation of universities and joining of graduates to the society. That means education of illiterate students is some kind of crime.

Yes. Exactly. It is a crime. We have thousands and hundreds of universities graduates each year without knowing that what their fates would be in the society. This is a crime. No person sits in the place he/she should sit. This is a disaster.

 

Three outstanding points of your show are make-up, set design and acting. Before talking about them, please explain why have you chosen an absurd structure for your show? Does the play push you to that line or is it you taste of direction?

Ninety out of 100 reviews of the play believe that “The Lesson” is absurd. Our approach is unreal here. We have tries to employ this approach in every element of the show ranging from make-up to set designing and acting. I have told the cast to stay away of realistic acting. We had performed “The Lesson” ten years ago, real. But I wanted to go beyond realism. We wanted to give ourselves a courage to see how successful we can be. The make-up is a little exaggerated. It is not appealing in a small auditorium and makes the audience bored. But this kind of make-up is new. It has been on vogue about a year in the world and is a painting on the face rather than make-up.