Shiraz, March 2004

Three years have gone by since I wrote Dance on Glasses. Three years: three months of writing, six months of rehearsals and around a hundred performances. After all that time, here I am again, sitting at the table in the same room where the first rehearsal took place, writing a note about this play.

Dance on Glasses was the fruit of my theatrical ambition. Its long silences, its stiff portrayals and the darkness in the first scene were as strange to a theatre still used to the worn-out realism of the 19th century as Farsi is in your own country. I remember the fear I felt when, through the tinted windows of the technical box, I saw Dance on Glasses being performed before an audience for the first time. The fear burning my blood as it coursed through my veins rose to heat my brain. My hand was shaking when I operated the light switch as my hoarse voice encouraged the actors: “Everything will be fine, it’s going to be a success.” For me, it is this very uncertainty of the result that gives theatre its sweetness. I didn’t know if it would work or not. It was a lie we were used to in order to hide our weakness and our lack of faith in what we were doing.

In part Dance on Glasses contains my own memories. In my mind the characters had other names, the room was different, there was no table or dancing. All that was in the room was silence and darkness: the silence of someone lying in the dark unable to sleep, saying nothing, devoid of any thought and just staring into the gloom. Only the tap lets water escape. I remember the suffering experienced through so many words and dialogues that simply turned pages black and deceived silence.

When I break the silence like this, all that I have left is a feeling of regret and failure. Silently I was protesting and angry, not understanding the stale and shabby words of other people, finding myself invaded by a new vocabulary, which would build tomorrow’s world. But as soon as I open my mouth, the words that pour out are cold and devoid of meaning. Because they are like the well-worn ones I heard as a child coming from my parents’ mouths, and I didn’t want them. My own words gave me neither perspectives nor friends. They simply preserved what little I had. I can only use them to ask for a Pepsi or say goodnight to my plant before going to bed again to stare into the darkness for another night, worn out, devoid of any feelings with the tap still dripping.

Amir Reza Koohestani

Shiraz, winter 1382*/2004

* The Iranian solar year