Act without Words I and II by Samuel Beckett is on stage at the newly opened hall of ‘Moj-e No’ (The New Wave) in Mirdamad Avenue, Tehran.
The performance is a joint production of Ali-Akbar Alizad and Alireza Keymanesh who have both directed and acted in the play, MNA reports.
Keymanesh said this is the first joint direction with Alizad on Beckett’s works, which are without any dialogues. “It is a sequel to our previous staging of Beckett’s plays,” he said.
During the 8 years since the establishment of their ‘Theater 84’ troupe, Alizad and Keymanesh have staged eight short plays by Beckett and also his ‘Waiting for Godot’ in Iran, the UK, Romania, and the Netherlands.
On the performing style and the storyline of the work, Keymanesh said the focus of the performance is on gestures, movements, form, and rhythm and like most Beckett plays “it does not contain one specific story line and therefore it is open to the audiences’ interpretation.”
Harmony
He said the sound, design and music by Kaveh Sattari is one of its special characteristics, which is in complete harmony with the “detailed acts and movements.”
‘Act without Words I’ and ‘Act without Words II’ are short mime plays, written by Beckett in late 1950s. Like many of his works, the plays were originally written in French (Acte sans paroles I and Acte sans paroles II), and translated into English by Beckett himself.
Act I, narrates the story of a person who struggles to reach a water bottle but does not succeed. Finally, when he gets hold of the bottle, he is no longer interested in drinking the water.
In Act II, two people are in two sacks on the stage. They are awakened with the prodding of a pole to start their daily routine. The performance starts at 6pm daily and runs till December 22.
