Mohammad B. Ghaffari: Ta'ziyeh Director

Ed. note:The following interview was conducted in the spring of 2004 in New York City for this special issue of TDR.

PETER J. CHELKOWSKI:

Let's start from the beginning. Could you tell us about your academic and theatrical background?

MOHAMMAD GHAFFARI:

Yes, I started with theatre when I was 11. I did impersonations of different characters. I continued with theatre activities in high school in my native Nishapur, and then I went to the Drama School of Tehran. When the Theatre Workshop of Tehran opened, I joined it and we were very active. Then in 1971 Peter Brook had auditions and I was chosen to work with him on a project with the International Research Group called Shiraz/Persepolis; the group that worked with Peter Brook eventually became the core of the City Theatre of Tehran.

CHELKOWSKI:

If I recall correctly, you met Peter Brook earlier, in 1969. Can you tell us about that as it is relevant to this issue of TDR?

GHAFFARI:

When I was in the Theatre Workshop, Peter Brook came to Tehran and he wanted to see a ta'ziyeh. I knew ta'ziyeh very well and I had collected ta'ziyeh texts. Since my childhood I had been fascinated with ta'ziyeh though I never performed in one. So I took Brook and another famous English director, Anthony Page, and a few Iranian playwrights and theatre directors to see a ta'ziyeh in my native province of Khorasan. We went to the village where The Ta'ziyeh of Muslim was to be performed. I remember it was after lunch that people began to gather in the square for the ta'ziyeh. When the performance started, everyone was still talking, walking, cars were passing by. I looked around and saw Peter nodding because nothing seemed to be happening. And then suddenly it got to the point where ta'ziyeh grabs the audience. Everyone knew the story and some knew it line for line. At that point everybody was paying attention. When the play was finished we went to the house of one of the performers and sat and Peter didn't speak for .. minutes or more. Then he declared, "This is what has been missing from the Western theatre for a long time."

CHELKOWSKI:

I think that the interview with Peter Brook published in 1979 in Parabola [4, 2], in which he makes a profound statement about ta'ziyeh, is based on that very performance in that village.

1.

Ashura performance of the ta'ziyeh in the village of Fadisheh, near Nishapur, in Khorasan, March 2002. Spectators have come from surrounding villages to see the performance on the village common. The tents represent the tents of the women of Hussein at Karbala. (Photo by Rabeah Ghaffari; courtesy of the Mohammed Ghaffari Collection)

GHAFFARI:

Yes, that was the first time that he saw a live ta'ziyeh. He must have read or heard about it before, but there were almost no films about ta'ziyeh at that time.

Then I wanted to show him a large ta'ziyeh, one that lasted for 10 to 12 hours. These are cooperative events of several villages and consist of various rituals such as procession and the ta'ziyeh. Contingents of mourners from several villages carrying Muharram banners called Alams converge on the village where the ta'ziyeh will be performed. Special food is prepared for this occasion and everyone partakes of it. I remember when I was a child that we used to go to this same village in a carriage during the first 10 days of Muharram and there were 2,000 to 3,000 people there. When I was six or seven, I remember vividly a performer who was playing a lion scared the horses and there was pandemonium. The performance had to be stopped because the horses galloped around the stage and then ran away.

For the benefit of Peter Brook I made arrangements with several villages for a large ta'ziyeh. We agreed that the play, 72 Bodies, would...