Towards

PLACE

In 1966 Peter Brook offered postmodern theatre The Empty Space—its scenographic manifesto. The key lines of his declaration are cited right at the beginning of the book: ‘I can take any empty space and call it a bare stage. A man walks across this empty space whilst someone else is watching him, and this is all that is needed for an act of theatre to be engaged.’ (7). Forty-five years later, under house arrest, Jafar Panahi sits on his living room carpet in the middle of his apartment in Tehran. This Is Not a Film: yellow tape for walls, a cushion for a bed, a chair for a window, torn tape for the entrance, a carpet for a stage. The purest act of theatrics is engaged within the national context of confinement; spatial relationships being crafted through action and intervention.

A negative space on screen; to come face to face with the creator of the work is to realise the work remains unfinished. It is to exist in the purgatorium of an empty stage before one makes the decisions of its contents. Thus, a negative space is created; a hesitation between action and inaction. The spectator is invited to enter this perfectly void outline and negotiate between reality and fiction. The ‘parabolic realism‘ (Dabashi 36) of Panahi’s pre-house-arrest filmography mutates into a miasma of the present that tears the film from its own form. It is as if audience and creator witness the dilemma of each theatric moment not sure if it should document or fictionalise itself anew. The mirroring of the director’s presence then, conceptualises how the nation may transcend from the vacant stage of inaction, into the emancipatory theatron of action. When a man walks across his cell weaving freedom in the knots of his rug, his walk becomes dangerous; his walk becomes a revolution.

Arc et Senans, Plan de la saline royale

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Works Cited

Brook, Peter. The Empty Space: A Book about the Theatre: Deadly, Holy, Rough, Immediate. Simon and Schuster, 1996.

Dabashi, Hamid. Makhmalbaf at Large: The Making of a Rebel Filmmaker. I.B.Tauris, 2008.

Last Update: September 2024