in the labyrinth of forestial sunspots i will always vanquish the dreaded beasts

2022
Amir Parsa
A play (Photo documentation)

The play must be performed in the forest.

The dialogue/polylogue takes place with just one actor.

The performer carries with them a curtain on their shoulder/back as they move from one sunspot to another. Carry the curtain like a burden. Carry the curtain like a backpack.

They place the curtain on a tree branch, or a support of some kind, hold it up, and pull it back as they begin the monologue at each sunspot.

Who is this person? The wrongly accused. The jailed dissident. The mad poet prophet. Or just a lost soul withering away (in prison?) imagining the play in the forest? The fantasy as the only way out…

The person becoming actor. Their monologue becoming theater. Their life, becoming play. The denuding of the process of making theatre–creating performance–to exorcize demons.

The audience follows the actor/performer as the latter moves from one sunspot to another. At times, audience participation, interjections, questions, are encouraged, prompted, allowed. The public follows–and becomes audience–as the curtain is dropped/pulled.
The ambiguous unfolding invites the public to reimagine their own situations, their own roleplaying, their own masks and selves. With all the elements of theatre ever-present: the sunspot as the spotlight, the curtain as the only key artifact.
An unfolding that forces the public to wonder if, after all, in this labyrinth, the performance is about nothing other than the attempt at creating a play that allows each and everyone to escape. And to wonder: how did I get here–and how do I find my way back.

in the labyrinth of forestial sunspots i will always vanquish the dreaded beasts

was written and performed at the Swimming Hole residency on June 26, 2022. In the spirit of the collaborative environment in which it was conceived and created, the play was purposely written in a few hours, and enlivened/premiered that very afternoon. Each iteration is indeed an enlivening–and an enlightening–with changes in the script, as well as other variables, allowed and encouraged. Elements of the story can be adapted to the actor. A shifting and pliable play that keeps certain components fixed (forms, sequences, content) while allowing improvisations and investigations that allow the guiding actor to explore: how we all end up where we are; how we all find our way back/home.