Around the world on the wings of language and imagination[1]
Around the world in eighty days
The simple and creative performance of Around the world in 80 days by Jalal Tehrani, and Hamidreza Bedaghi and Shahin Sadeghian as actors, in my opinion, was a show that showed the potentials of language and imagination. The story begins with an accident, a very normal accident, the kind of accident that happens all the time. Two people clash into each other and find a bag that neither of them know who that bag belongs to, after a while they find out that there is a bomb inside the bag and these two-a philosopher and a normal citizen-unwillingly face a heavy responsibility. Clashing with someone on the street is a form of relationship in this modern world. An inevitable and unpleasant relationship. A meaningless relationship; because it has not been spoken yet. A relationship that has placed a closed bag of meaning between the two, and it is that bag that ties all the components of the show together like a shining metaphor. The philosopher opens the bag looking for meaning and tries to understand and decode the thing inside. The meaning that is obtained from the heart by reviewing dozens of times and strictly following the criteria of research in classical teachings, isn’t really that reliable and every time that the philosopher uses the phrase “probably” he confirms this even more. But the only definitive meaning in the whole thing is the “bomb” and the normal citizen is terrified of it. The confrontation between the philosopher and the citizen in this show is an example of the confrontation between language and language. A language that on the one hand is the cause of the relationship and on the other hand expresses the failure of the relationship. From both sides of this coin, which one is true? Descartes? Or Wittgenstein? And which of these two approaches is liberating? The depth of the mind, as the philosopher thinks? Or relying on the hard ground like the normal citizen? The answer is none. In Around the world in 80 days, it’s the imagination that connects the two personas in the end and puts them on the wings of imagination to go around the world in the hopes of defusing a bomb which might go off at any moment
Loss of meaning
An established man, a young man and an ownerless bag, repeated sentences, repeated questions, repeated movements that gradually become rhythmic movements along with music, remind us of our daily lives. Language games with repetition and apparently unrelated combinations without cause-and-effect relationship or the language of two people come out, one of them seems like a philosopher and the other is common. One plays the role of the rider and the other assumes the role of the burden. The performances of Hamidreza Badaghi and Shahin Sadeghian with a very cool humor show the struggle to find a concept of human identity, which confronts us beyond the repetitions of this two-person absurd show with the pain of loss of meaning that we know very well how it clings to our necks.
Hafez Mousavi
[1]Sharq newspaper, July 2016