Dermot Bolger and Kazem Shahryari would appear to have a great deal in common. His new play, a collaboration with a Paris-based Iranian writer, is the result of a dramatic experiment that he'd rather forget, writes Lara Marlowe.
Bolger was born in north Dublin in 1959 and knew the hard life of a factory worker in Germany before he became a full-time writer, in 1984. Shahryari was born in Tehran in 1956 and was first arrested and beaten by Savak, the shah's secret police, at the age of 16. He studied theatre at Tehran University before the Islamic revolution of 1979. When the mullahs took power he went underground; he was arrested, tortured and subjected to mock executions before escaping from prison and slowly making his way to France. Yet hardship formed different personalities. Shahryari is an inveterate optimist and dreamer, Bolger a cynical realist.
Earlier this year they completed possibly the world's first play written by two authors who share no common language. "What is more, Kazem was writing in French, while his mother tongue is Persian," says Emile-Jean Dumay, the translator who acted as go-between. "The back-and-forth between languages and nationalities was exciting; there are amazing similarities and contrasts."
Shahryari considers the result, Départ Et Arrivée (Departure And Arrival), which he is directing at his Art Studio theatre, in Paris, extraordinary. He is proud of the play and is convinced it will one day be performed around the world.
Bolger is far more circumspect. "It is not actually the theatrical journey I set out on," he says. "This was an experiment. For me it has ended." He calls Shahryari's production "two plays merged together for the purpose of this performance". Although Shahryari dreamed of bringing Departure And Arrival to the stage in Dublin, he accepts Bolger's wish that it not be performed in English.
When Dumay introduced Shahryari to Bolger's work the Iranian immigrant was so enchanted that he chose three of Bolger's plays for the Théâtre des 5 continents series he edits at L'Harmattan publishers. He put two Bolger plays, The Passion Of Jerome and April Bright, on stage in Paris. Bolger attended the first nights and was so impressed that in the summer of 2002 he wrote to Dumay, proposing that he and Shahryari write a play together.
From the outset the Irish and Franco-Iranian authors had different visions of their project. Their experience is a cautionary tale about the perils of collaborative efforts and the dangers of getting lost in translation. Although both continue to express a kind of baffled admiration for the other, they will not work together again.
Bolger was haunted by a news story in December 2001, when eight Kurdish stowaways were found suffocated to death in a container in Wexford. He wanted to compare the experience of Irish economic emigrants to Britain in the 1960s with that of present-day immigrants to Ireland.
Over the following year and a half Bolger and Shahryari exchanged more than 200 pages of e-mails via Dumay, who translated Bolger's English into French and Shahryari's French into English. "Bolger wrote his as a monologue. It had to be broken up and cut by about a quarter," Dumay recalls. "Kazem had to explain things that appeared obscure, for example where and when the lovers first meet, how the Kurdish girl travels to Ireland." Most of Bolger's cuts were historic detail, although the Irish mother still recounts English soldiers searching the house, dancing in independence celebrations in 1922 and the death of Countess Markievicz.
"Bolger is much more reserved than Kazem. He didn't want to hurt anyone's feelings," Dumay recalls. "You see it in their characters. Maureen is somewhat passive, whereas Sûsan [ the Kurdish girl whose part was written by Shahryari] is in charge." Bolger wanted the play to be factually accurate. Yes, he insisted to Dumay and Shahryari, there really were signs in Manchester saying "Blacks, Dogs and Irishmen Forbidden" in 1963. The Irish author challenged Shahryari: did the Turks really destroy 3,000 Kurdish villages? He took issue with Shahryari's inventing the story of a Kurdish village flooded by the Turks to create an artificial lake; Shahryari subsequently learned that such an incident really happened.
The three men worked together intensely for two days in Paris in February this year. "We printed up everything that had to be cut in red, everything to be added in blue," says Dumay. "It was quite acrobatic and physically exhausting." The play was first performed in April, at the Jean Vilar Theatre, in Vitry-sur-Seine. Bolger left quickly on opening night, expressing his reservations later.
Maureen and Sûsan sit on beds on opposite sides of the stage, each talking to her unborn baby. Maureen wears an old-fashioned nightgown and has a battered suitcase that contrasts with Sûsan's modern holdall. It is not immediately obvious to the audience that Maureen is talking in 1963, Sûsan in 2003, in the same hotel room. A few lines of narration could easily solve the problem.
Bolger used a similar theme, what Dumay calls "the memory of walls", in April Bright. In that play a young couple move into a house where decades earlier a young girl died of tuberculosis. The wife is pregnant, and she is ill at ease when the now ageing sister of the dead girl visits. Eventually, time collapses and the dead girl and new infant meld into one.
The compelling, intertwined stories of Maureen and Sûsan share many elements. Both girls are the youngest daughters of large families. In both cases elder siblings have died or emigrated. Maureen's mother tells her: "I thought I would have no more children, and then you came. You are my blessing. If one day you left it would break my heart." Sûsan's father carries photographs of her 12 scattered brothers and sisters in his wallet, "12 pieces torn from my heart". Maureen's father is a tailor; Sûsan's dyes fabric for a living. When she was a little girl he cut a piece from every bolt to make her many-coloured dresses.
Maureen falls in love with Michael, home on summer holidays from his job as a construction worker in Britain. Sûsan is fascinated by Vedat, a photographer whose neighbouring village was destroyed and who has served time in Turkish prisons; we are never sure whether he belongs to a separatist movement. In the Catholic Ireland of the 1960s and Muslim Kurdistan today, romance outside marriage is the source of gossip and shame.
Aside from the fact that he feels the stories are two distinct plays, not one, Bolger reproaches Shahryari for what he suspects is a biased account of the conflict between Turks and Kurds. "I come from a very divided political culture, and I'm always cautious of one-sided political messages," he explains.
"Dermot thought Vedat [ Sûsan's lover] was a terrorist," Shahryari admits. "He wanted us to say so. . . . I wrote what the character let me write." Although both girls are in desperate situations, pregnant, unwed and alone, Shahryari's version ends with a sort of fusion of the two characters to strains of Kurdish and Irish music. In a mood of celebration the image of a little girl dancing in a red dress is projected onto a white sheet.
Bolger objects to Shahryari's conclusion. "The play ends on a false note of optimism," he says. Maureen is going to face huge difficulties in keeping her child in England, and in all likelihood Sûsan will be deported from Ireland." Shahryari agrees with Bolger's analysis. "But I don't want to show reality," he protests. "I want to show my wish and the wish of the audience that these two pregnant girls, 40 years apart, meet up and that a child's spirit plays about them. . . . I don't want to do a realistic, naturalistic play, to sink to the depths of despair. I struggled for three months in plaster up to my chest [ after torture in Iran]; the police broke my vertebrae. I never gave up. I'm alive, and I'm singing a hymn, that you have to build the future."
Départ Et Arrivée, by Kazem Shahryari and Dermot Bolger, is at Art Studio theatre, Paris, until December 8th; These Green Heights, Bolger's new play, about three generations of two Ballymun families, is at Axis Arts Centre, Ballymun, from November 24th until December 11th; his Departure will be broadcast as a one-act play on RTÉ Radio 1 next month
