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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 January 2009
The New World Performance Laboratory is an experimental theatre company based in Cleveland, Ohio, founded by a number of artists who originally collaborated in the context of Jerzy Grotowski's Objective Drama Programme. NWPL investigates traditional performance techniques of various cultures, conducting private research as well as mounting publicly-accessible productions. Iranian director Massoud Saidpour, a founding member of the company, has developed a series of performances based on Sufi teaching stories which explore the adaptation of traditional Persian materials and performance idioms for presentation by a culturally-diverse ensemble. Here, Lisa Wolford examines the traditions and source materials from which Saidpour's performance structures are derived, and considers the potential impact, both for participants and spectators, of working with material drawn from esoteric or initiatory genres. Lisa Wolford participated in Jerzy Grotowski's Objective Drama Programme from 1989 to its conclusion in 1992. Her book on Objective Drama Research, The Intersection of the Timeless Moment, is forthcoming, and she is also co-editor with Richard Schechner of The Grotowski Sourcebook, to be published by Routledge. Her writings on Grotowski and the New World Performance Laboratory have appeared in The Drama Review, and she is currently completing her doctoral dissertation on Grotowski's recent work at Northwestern University.
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56. In reading the text of Salaman and Absal, I had been concerned both by the story and by Saidpour's choice to stage it as a one-person show. I felt the elimi-nation of Absal's physical presence relegated her character to a symbolic status as accessory to Salaman's journey of development, giving full emphasis to male interiority and subjectivity. Jami's version at least goes so far as to suggest that the deceased Absal is trans-formed, by the power of her love, into the figure of the Celestial Bride. An Orthodox Muslim version of the tale which Saidpour shared with me is relentlessly misogynistic. After Absal is burned alive she is replaced in Salaman's affections by the daena. No connection is established between the mortal woman and the heavenly figure, the implication being that Salaman has spiritually progressed beyond the need for anything so tainted and carnal as an earthly female. Witnessing the actual performance, however, I was less disturbed by such considerations. This was perhaps due in part to Colladetti's youth and the gentle, receptive (qualities culturally posited as ‘feminine’) nature of his presentation, which I find difficult to associate with models of patriarchal oppression.
57. Op. cit., p. 221.
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