There and Back Again*

Due to its challenging international position, and thus the barriers regarding international cooperation and support for arts and cultural management, the Iranian cultural sector has yielded many highly professional arts and cultural managers in recent decades, who have developed more than 100 local and international performing arts festivals with a broad range of topics and formats. Among them are Bohemi Theater Group, Ctrl+Z Theater Group, and NH Theatre Agency with far reaching experiences. NH Theatre Agency has been touring Iranian shows and working with the young generation of theater makers. They are also assisting Iranian festivals on programming and developing, as well as co-organizing Microleev Theatre Festival, a local artist-led festival dedicated to a new form of Object/ Puppet Theater in Iran for four editions. Bohemi Theater Group is multi-award winner Theater Company in Iran, which is also holding workshops to help students develop an artistic vision; they recently founded the first International Theatericultural Residency in Iran that hosted more than 20 artists during its three editions. Ctrl+Z theater group is an experimental theater company and currently is based in Tehran and San Francisco. Its focus has been on the integration of performing arts and digital media. Ctrl+Z strive to design creative digital tools or platforms to create engaging and effective experiences for the audience. They started an own online platform for digital site-specific performances (Netformance) in 2014.

 

With more than 120 performances a day being performed in Tehran, Iranian theater is somewhat centralized in the capital while there are many individuals and groups practicing different theatrical formats in other cities with less than half of the resources. Based on the statistics of the Dramatic Arts Center of Iran, almost 50% of the Theaters in Iran are being produced and performed in Tehran. As for the Festivals, only two among six of the international ones are happening in other cities.

 

At the beginning of March 2020, frustrated after staying home and cancellation of our festivals, we joined forces to launch a global online festival with these approaches:

 

1. Solidarity: We have been involved in a global issue, regardless of race, religion, age, or belief. Perhaps this is a good time to forge solidarity and exchange of knowledge and culture. 

 

2. New Voices: It may be a good opportunity to practice providing a different context and to present the work of independent artists in a coherent way to the new media. Now is the perfect time for artists to dare, and to challenge their creativity to revitalize the regular theatergoers as well as to draw new audiences online.

 

3. Decentralization: Since there are not that many theaters, galleries, and cultural spaces in other cities in Iran as there are in Tehran, many young people outside of the capital often get anti-cultural educations through the internet, free and in abundance. In this context, the internet could be used to raise awareness, entertain, build, and develop a community.

 

4. Change of Narrative: Digital, Environmental and Experiential performances have often been considered a byproduct of indoor festivals. At this festival, we strive to provide a unique space for this kind of performance and to have artists who dare to be alternative than the mainstreams of these days.

 

5. Accessibility: This virtual event is a great opportunity to discuss performances, theoretical topics and concepts, and definitions of multimedia arts, not only inside Iran but interacting with artists from around the world. The first edition of the festival happened on the Live feature of Instagram platform to have a focused research on the accessibility of this platform for all, but the general idea for the future is to expand it to other web-based platforms to reach a wider audience.

 

 

The main difficulty is that our weekends are on Thursdays & Fridays. Following this pattern means working with the world only for 3 days! We were working almost 12/7 in two timelines (Tehran & San Francisco). The real obstacle though are the sanctions by the U.S. on the Iranian economy which doesn't allow us to have any international banking (including accounts, debit & credit cards), consequently no international funds for the festival or fees for the artists. The first edition of the festival therefore was a pro-bono activity and ran on a volunteer basis. 

 

 

The 20 days festival included 46 performances, 24 panels, 70 artists, 42 speakers and 6300 Instagram followers (min 150, max 600 viewers for each event) from 22 countries.

 

 

Programming of the festival was based on both an open call and curated program. We wanted something authentic, something different, and something to be remembered in the future as our reflection on these dark days. So, after initiating an international curation board including Meera Krishna from Prakriti Foundation, India, Erica McCalman of the Art Oracle, Australia, and Liu Xiaoyi of Emergency Stairs, Singapore, we programmed 46 performances among a surprisingly big number of 122 applications received. The program consisted of contemporary music, audio/visual installations, storytelling, site-specific performance, dance, etc. All of the performances were either produced specifically for the digital realm or have been adapted to be performed on the Instagram live feature.

 

 

Our pilot edition was mainly aimed at evaluating our administration including audience development, fundraising possibilities, productional matters, marketing and curational aesthetics. In addition to our core team, we’ve had three volunteers from Iran and Tunisia in the festival’s Design, Marketing and Production sections.

 

 

During the preparation time of the festival, we managed to present the festival in a couple of Zoom meetings, did some interviews but most of the marketing of the festival to bring audiences happened viral. In this time of digitalization, and for an online festival that was supposed to happen on Instagram, the best marketing strategy was word of mouth. Having a good network locally and internationally helped the festival to be seen and featured on various networks. 

 

 

The financial part is coming with a strikethrough on the word, not because the festival was not meant to be funded or to support artists but because we believed that the nature of our time requires some altering in our work and economical patterns. So, in a way, finance is there but not there. The first altering was that the festival is organized on a volunteer-based activity. 

 

As of the second change, in order to organize an international festival, we needed not only to support our local artists but to provide payments to our international artists and colleagues. Due to the fact that in Iran there’s no access to international banking, the questions remaining were:

 

A. Shall we do the festival with a local approach?

B. Shall we do the festival internationally and ask the artists (in these strange hard times) to produce and perform for free?

 

We chose the second option and humanity won! We did a festival with 66 events based on value to the heart rather than a value to money. A note to remember is that we are not promoting in any way a non-paying festival for artists, but this strange time required a different business model and there’s a dire need for a new one for the future as well. 

 

 

Many of the great festivals of our time rose from the ashes of the world wars, many of the second wave festival developed from the social movements and changes of the end of the 60s and the beginning of our millennia. It is important to collect the stories of these times and to leave a trace for our successors just like our predecessors did. 

 

Many festivals have moved online since March 2020 and postponed their real event to 2021, many conversations have happened regarding the future of festivals and arts. Once we accept the fact that online performances (not the pre-recorded videos) are not here to replace real theater but to engage people in a new art format, that’s heading one step towards daring to build a future together for the better of performing arts and festivals. As Bernard Faivre d’Arcier, former long-standing Director of the Avignon Festival said: "The true role of a festival is to help artists to dare, to engage in new projects.” 

 

And this applies to us, organizers and curators, as well...to dare and to engage in new projects.

 

*From the title of the book "The Hobbit, or There and Back Again” by J. R. R. Tolkien