Page 68 - Javanan Magazine Issue # 1865

ISSUE No. 1865
JAVANAN
ary LGBTQ Writers Retreat under Luis Alfaro, and he gave us an
exercise by María Irene Fornés—place a hand over your heart and
feel the heartbeat of a character. I did and I got this strong feeling of
my mother’s presence. I figured if my mother wouldn’t, or couldn’t,
tell me her whole story, then as an artist I could fill in the rest with
my imagination. What’s strange and surreal is that the details I imag-
ined turned out to be true to my mother’s story, despite her never
having told me. It felt like channeling.

What drew you to performing the piece yourself? And will you
talk a little bit about embodying the character of Roya?
Well, I get to play my mother which is every gay man’s dream! Or
nightmare…depending. I wanted to literally step into my mother’s
shoes and see things from her perspective. I get to explore our dy-
namic through these lenses of body, gender, sexuality.
I kept making these surprising discoveries about the character’s ges-
tures, mannerisms, her accent—they’d appear in rehearsals. Now,
it’s become second nature—I’ll snap into a gesture, or her laugh.
And it’s like BOOM. I’m in it. But it’s weird because doing the play
feels like an out of body experience every time. It’s like something
else takes over.

Why does it feel so important to share your mother’s story with
audiences now?
I think that at its core this is a play about a mother-son relationship,
and the character asks questions that have always felt urgent to me.
There’s also, of course, the ongoing women-led revolution happen-
ing in Iran, which adds layers of complexity and urgency. There are
so many parallels between what my mother experienced over forty
years ago in Iran and what’s happening now. This detail isn’t in the
play, but she and her sister were actually taken to the same deten-
tion center as Mahsa Amini, whose death in police custody sparked
this revolutionary moment. My aunt was held for three days and
received 75 lashes for not wearing hijab. One call coming out of Iran
is “be our voice” and I think that’s part of what we can contribute
as artists—in some small way, we can amplify the voices of those
who are putting their lives on the line, crying out for “Woman. Life.
Freedom.”
I’ve taken the show around the country with Moritz [von Stuelpna-
gel]—we got support from Sundance, and did it at the Ojai Play-
wrights Conference, Theatre Aspen, all over. I’m surprised how
Four Questions with much the play resonates with all kinds of audiences of different ages,
backgrounds, most of whom knew very little about Iran or Iranians.
Avaaz Playwright We rarely see these stories on stage or screen. In the news, stories
about Iran are typically either traumatic or fearmongering. But when
they see the play, people say “that’s my mother, too,” or that it’s

Michael Shayan given them a new way into questions they had about their own sense
of belonging and home.

As an artist, what inspires you? Where do you turn for creative
When did you start writing avaaz—and how did the idea come motivation?
to you? I take a lot of inspiration from the motherland: “Tehran-geles,” which
My mother never really talked to me about her past—when I’d ask, feels like a character in the play. I grew up in what I call “Tehran-
she’d deflect or make a joke. It felt taboo. I asked if I could interview geles,” formerly known as Westwood. My family gatherings felt like
her and when I set down the recorder, that opened something up—I theater. Even a casual Friday night Shabbat was like a one-act play.
think the formality of it gave her permission to talk about things Always larger than life, with gossip and betrayal and make-ups and
she’d never told me. break-ups and music and dancing and enough food to feed a small
That interview stayed with me. I was a Fellow at the Lambda Liter- country.

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