A chair and a performer are on the stage.
THE PERFORMER
When does a performance begin? When the performer starts to talk? Once the audience is seated in the theatre? When the performer takes the first step forward? When the lighting changes? Given that a performance is a contract between the performer and the audience, couldn’t it be any of these instants? As such, we need to come to an agreement regarding the details. We have one hour together in this hall, and we do want to start the performance. We might succeed – or fail to begin. In any case, once that hour has passed, we’ll have to leave the room.
(To the control room) Lighting, please!
A performance about silence is about to take place right over there.
Before the performance begins, I should introduce myself. I’m Nazanin Sanatkar, born on May 8th, 1989, a 2012 Surgical technologist graduate of Tehran University of Medical Sciences, now a theatre student in Fine Arts at the University of Tehran. For nearly 10 years I have worked as a surgical assistant at different hospitals in Tehran. In March 2019, I participated in a documentary theatre workshop held at University of Tehran – at the very first session I shared a past experience with the other participants. We discussed it during the workshop, and on September 2019, I did a performance about that event, entitled ‘Studying Wavelength of Silence Before Metamorphosis’, which was staged in this theatre for several nights.
(A video of the performance, without sound, plays in the background.)
I asked the same question at the beginning of that performance: when does a performance begin? Thinking, at that time, that it begins anew every evening. But then, some months after the performances took place, it occurred to me that on only one of the evenings had the performance really begun.
(To the stage assistant) Could you please put a chair on the stage for the lawyer?
(A chair is placed on the stage for the lawyer.)
In order for the performance to begin, I need to tell you the things I thought about while preparing for it.
Throughout the composition process, we analysed what had happened to me in 2016. My reaction to that event had been silence, and I thought about silence as we worked toward this new performance: what types of silence do we have? How do they differ from one another? How long do they last? One second? A minute? One month? A year? …
I made a list of silences:
silence between musical notes,
silence at a wedding sermon,
lovers’ silence when gazing at one another,
silence at the library,
students’ silence when a teacher speaks,
one minute of silence for the dead,
a physician’s silence when listening to a patient’s heart,
a political prisoner’s silence under torture,
a witness’s silence at the court.
How do these types of silences differ from one another?
Perhaps silences contain a kind of energy, and perhaps there are different amounts of energy stored within each of them. Within certain silences is a vast energy – and thus breaking or resisting them might unleash a positive or negative effect upon human lives…
I was trying to understand my silence – and how it had actually come into existence. I tried to distinguish between the reasons for different types of silence.
For instance, the silence between musical notes has an aesthetic basis.
A physician is silent when listening to a patient’s heart for better concentration.
Dedication might be the grounds for a political prisoner’s silence under torture.
A witness’s silence at the court might stem from fear, or from possible benefit, or perhaps from indifference…
This was quite a challenge; behind some silences were so many possible motives, and many that had likely never even crossed my mind…
Next to this list of silences I’m making a list of concealed reasons for silences; how lengthy this list will be, I just don’t know. It may never be completed throughout the course of my lifetime.
(To the assistant) Could you put a chair on the stage for the attorney?
(A chair is placed on the stage for the attorney.)
For this performance to begin, we need a place for the attorney.
I had come to the conclusion that silence contains energy; when broken, that energy is released. Silences with immense energy can influence the lives of individuals, or even that of a society.
Silences can turn into words,
into a sound,
a protest,
a renunciation,
a resignation,
a death,
a document,
a testimony…
I always wondered what happens to forgotten silences?
Do silences continue to exist after being forgotten?
In 2019, in the same performance as this one, I wrote down my silence and turned it into a document, asking the audience to do the same – if they had a silence which they wanted to turn into a document. I still have many of the documents given to me by the audience members in 2019. Some took theirs with them… I asked one of the members of the audience to come up onto the stage and read my document aloud.
In a similar manner, I now ask one of you to come up onto the stage and read aloud.
(A member of the audience steps onto the stage, takes the document from the performer, and reads it aloud.)
[Document text: I was working at the Children’s Hospital in 2017. One of our patients was a two-year-old child. When transferred to the ward after a successful operation, the child died due to negligence and lack of proper care. Upon the parents’ lodging of a complaint, the hospital officials changed the patient’s record completely. The cause of death was declared ‘unknown’. We all knew what that meant.]
(The member of the audience returns the document to the performer and returns to their seat.)
From the first day of the workshop, when I brought up the subject of my silence, we wondered: why? What had made me keep silent? I tried to analyse it from every angle, studying various reasons. But along the way, I was denying a substantial reality, one that I wished didn’t exist. The first day I attended the documentary theatre workshop, I had forgotten that we were supposed to bring a document with us referring to an event which we may have experienced. At the session, all the other participants had brought one such document with them. I remembered the event from 2017 and described it to the group. The reality is, if it hadn’t been for the theatre workshop, I might have never thought about it again. Before that day I had not even given it a moment’s thought. When I realised this, I was scared of myself, of my ability to forget…. I told my audience in 2019 that I wasn’t sure what I might do in similar situations, and that this made me afraid of myself.
(To the assistant) Could you prepare a place for the witness?
(A chair is placed on the stage as a place for the witness.)
At the end of the performance one night, an audience member asked: ‘Why didn’t you say anything? Why don’t you say anything now?’
I tried to explain my reasons, to tell her about the situation I had found myself in, but my explanations were not sufficient. Others also started to question me. Some defended me, some put me on trial and judged me. There was someone present that night whose father had died due to a medical error and they too wanted to know: ‘Why don’t you say something right now?’
I told them: ‘I don’t even know the child’s name.’
The performance had turned into a trial. That evening, I even spoke those words, saying that it was a performance and not a trial…
Months later, when I thought it over, I realised that the only night when my performance had truly begun was that very night. My performance needed to turn into a trial. This performance only begins when it is transformed into a trial.
I want you to help me hold this trial. This is the spot for my defendant. Anyone willing to defend me can come sit here.
Over here is the place for the attorney who analyses the charges against me and interrogates me about the event. Anybody who wishes to ask me questions regarding my silence can come up onto the stage and sit here.
This spot is for the witnesses. A witness at this court is someone who is guilty of silence and has an understanding of such a situation, or someone who is hurt by the silence of others. If there is someone in the audience who shares such a condition, they can ask the defendant to call them up to this place on stage.
All those present will act as judges; a change of roles is possible with the attorney’s permission.
I will take my position as the accused and wait for the performance to begin.
(To the assistant:) How much time do we have?
THE ASSISTANT
40 minutes.
THE PERFORMER
We have 40 more minutes to be in this room. I will wait for the performance to begin -- and for every minute that I wait, I will destroy one of the silences from 2019.
(The performance begins as an interaction, or the waiting continues as the documents are destroyed. At the end of the time limit, all should leave the theatre.)
2021