There’s a moment in ECHO, Iranian playwright Nassim Soleimanpour’s latest theatrical experiment, when the actor on stage is reading a monologue about migration and it flirts with the idea of migration being a natural force of the universe. The big bang happened and then rapid expansion and every particle, every atom has been on the move away from the centre of the universe ever since then. It’s a beautiful image, conjuring thoughts of travelling versus stasis. Exploration versus staying ignorant. It’s potent but it belies the fact that several ructions of the current world are centred on displacement and forced migration, asylum seekers denied a place in a second or third country and some Green Card holders being disappeared from America.
Soleimanpour’s
2010 play, White Rabbit Red Rabbit, was performed across the world,
while the playwright remained living in Iran, unable to leave the country,
after refusing military service. That work, like this new one, was modelled
around the conceit of an actor coming on stage without ever having read the
script. But the real thrill was the idea that the writer, in some senses, escaped
Iran by sending his work out to the world. He was able to defy the stringent
rules of an oppressive government.
It was
powerful to know the work was being produced all over the world over a period
of a couple of years. It was connecting him to the world, us to him and like
any playwright, his work was alive without him being there. It’s a thrill to
know an audience somewhere outside of your town or state or country is listening
to your words and you’re not along for the ride.
ECHO mixes things up, folding in new
theatrical trickery, like digital projection and pre-recorded footage and live
streaming. The creators of the work would prefer I give as little away as
possible, because the joy of this work is in the reveals. It is clever in the
way things thread together and the present intersects with the past and
distance becomes a kind of fiction. Theatre connects us all, right? If we are
separated by time or distance or knowledge or ideology, theatre can be a
bridge.
Every night
there’s a new actor. For opening night, Ben Lawson was the performer jumping in
with both feet for a cold-read in front of the Malthouse Theatre audience. I’ve
seen Lawson recently in the Binge mini-series Mix Tape and he’s done a
lot of film and television in America since he was on Neighbours twenty
years ago. He was dry-mouthed nervous early on and while he was following a
script (sometimes on the screens in front of him, sometimes in an earpiece) and
under direction (in the earpiece), he was notably thrown by needing to improvise
sometimes.
The most alive moments for me were very explicitly about Soleimanpour’s relationship with his home country of Iran and the immigrant experience. He’s living in Berlin and has a German passport. His and his wife's parents are still in Iran, but going back and forth still isn't easy.
There’s
a scene in ECHO which replicates dealing with passport control in Iran,
where Lawson is in the place of Soleimanpour – interrogated and isolated. A
more specifically fraught moment on this particular night was when the actor
was asked if he would ever visit Iran. It’s a tricky question to answer right
now and Lawson being lost for words created a real palpable tension in the
room. But he lives in New York and living in America is tricky right now, too.
There is
some real magic in Derek Richards’ video and production design, beautiful
images of landscapes and the night sky and the universe cast across the stage
and Lawson’s face. Anna Clock’s sound design helps to keep the tension up and
elucidate the wonder of the imagery the production plays with.
A recent
production of ECHO at the Royal Court Theatre in London featured
performers like Dominic West and Daniel Kaluuya and Juliet Stevenson. The
Melbourne season will treat audiences to appearances from Nadine Garner and
David Campbell, along with journalist Stan Grant and We Used to Be Journos' Jan Fran. Each one of them will bring
a different energy to proceedings, no doubt.
I am fully
on board with the notion that theatre can connect us, that it reaches across
time and space and finds a way to cheat both. I believe what we
have in common outweighs our differences; though this idea is becoming harder and
harder to hold as truth. I believe travel and experience and learning about
other people’s lives and cultures enriches us all, absolutely. The more we
understand each other, the better off we’ll be.
ECHO imparts these ideas in ways that
are both lyrical and heavy-handed. Trying to replicate the experience of the
migrant or migration in a piece that puts the actor at a disadvantage – a stranger
in a not-so-strange land, is an interesting concept that doesn’t quite cohere.
I imagine a
more seasoned theatre performer (Lawson’s bio tells me he hasn’t been on stage
for 19 years), who is open to playing and trying things out and isn’t shy about
improvisation, might have elevated my experience. But so much of the production and its conception is driven by interesting ideas that rarely get to the heart of the matter.
ECHO is playing at the Malthouse until 19th July
Photos: Eugene Hyland
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