international theatre exchange—met Torange Yeghiazarian, artistic director of Golden Thread Productions, a company "dedicated to theatre that explores Middle Eastern cultures and identities."
The pair decided to collaborate, and Yeghiazarian suggested Levitow meet with Lerner, who said he was interested in writing a play about relations between Iran, Israel, and the United States. After a co-worker referred Levitow to a Performing Arts Journal article about Iranian director and creative-arts professor Mahmood Karimi-Hakak, Levitow asked Karimi-Hakak to join the collaboration.
"I had done a couple of intercultural collaborations in previous years, so I learned that it was important to get to know each other as people first before we went into the demanding pressures of any kind of collaboration artistically," Levitow said. So the group—Lerner, Levitow, Karimi-Hakak, and Yeghiazarian, along with designer Daniel Michaelson—holed up at Siena College, in Loudonville, N.Y., where they lived together on campus, cooked for one another, went for walks, and got to know one another for 10 days. The school eventually workshopped the play.
Karimi-Hakak, a native Iranian, was hesitant to meet Lerner, a native Israeli. "I thought that we probably, on the very first hour, would be punching each other and walking out of the meeting," Karimi-Hakak said. "Two and a half years later, I can tell you that I love the man."
Eventually, the group discovered common ground. "We found one thing we all agree upon: We agree that we don't believe that military or violent intervention is the best solution," Levitow said. "We are not, as a group, in favor of a military attack on Iran by the United States or by Israel." This founding belief led to the main question posed by the play: Is dialogue between these countries possible, or is war inevitable?
Though the creators of the play had years to develop trust in one another and debate these issues, the actors didn't have the luxury of time. The three leads—an Iranian, an Egyptian, and an American—had to quickly come to terms with their political identities and with how their opinions inform the actions of their characters, a process they are still going through. Yeghiazarian said the actors "have lively debates during rehearsal."
Al Faris, an Egyptian American who has frequently played stereotypical terrorist roles in Hollywood, was delighted to be in a political play. But he was often in the middle of heated debates with co-star Ali Pourtash, a native Iranian who plays the Israeli arms dealer but politically opposes the current Iranian regime. One debate centered on whether Faris' character, the politician and cleric from Iran, could be trusted. Pourtash argued that he could not. Faris and director Karimi-Hakak argued that the character could act without the ayatollah's blessing. Most of the arguments weren't resolved, and the collaborators had to agree to disagree.
Karimi-Hakak said a positive side effect came out of the discourse. "The more intensely we argue about our own beliefs, the more intensely we understand the characters," he noted. Faris said his convictions help his acting: "I think I will be able to deliver from a place of real honesty because of my beliefs."
For a director with his own views, reconciling his actors' political differences during rehearsals brought larger realizations to light. "To work with these [actors], it makes me realize how difficult it is for these countries to come together and talk," Karimi-Hakak said. "Yet how exciting it is once we achieve something, once we get to a point where we all understand each other."
For Karimi-Hakak, the importance of this cross-cultural collaboration cannot be emphasized enough. "This collaboration made me realize what I have always thought: That unless the artists take it upon themselves to speak out, to work together, to bring about change, the change is not going to be achieved anywhere in the world," he said. "The politicians can't manage it. The educators have done all they can…. Maybe the 21st century is the time for the artist to take it upon themselves to bring about change in the world."
Back Stage West
September 20, 2007
By Nicole Kristal
Consider for a moment what would happen if the United States planned to attack Iran within the next 72 hours and two childhood friends—an Israeli arms dealer and a Muslim cleric—met in a monastery in Rome to try to strike a deal to postpone the attack. Toss an American ambassador with his own interests into the negotiation, and you've got the premise for Benedictus—a play with haunting, timely themes created through a rare collaboration between Iranian, Israeli, and American artists over the past three years. It premieres Sept. 29 in San Francisco and will move to Los Angeles in November.
"We didn't know that [the play] would be so timely," said Israeli playwright Motti Lerner, who penned the political thriller. "We didn't know it would be so relevant when we started the process, but unfortunately it is."
The seed for the project was planted at the Cairo International Festival for Experimental Theatre in 2003, when dramaturge Roberta Levitow—founder of Theatre Without Borders, an organization of individual theatre artists around the world interested in an