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I Said This to the Bird single work   drama   - 90 mins
Issue Details: First known date: 2023... 2023 I Said This to the Bird
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'In I Said This To the Bird, four strangers accidentally meet and explore their dual senses of alienation as refugees in the midst of a city-wide pandemic lockdown.

'Four strangers, all Iranian men (for this production, a woman performs one of the man’s roles), are congregating in the hall of a migrant resource center somewhere in Melbourne. Their meeting coincides with the lifting of public health restrictions that have prohibited social gatherings and kept the city silent and in lockdown for many weeks. While all city residents have suffered during this unprecedented period of immobility, for recently arrived asylum seekers and refugees, the enforced isolation has been an especially gruelling and emotionally turbulent ordeal.

'In their coming together at the migrant resource centre, Arjang, Wahid, Sara, and Noshan take the audience through a rollercoaster of emotions, from anxiety to hostility, paranoia, alienation, and anger, cut across by brief moments of hope and exhilaration. I said this to the Bird confronts its audience with the destabilising experience of being displaced and othered, the frailty and thinness of friendship, and the challenges of enduring unrelenting hurt, loneliness and abandonment. Amid such psychologically unsettling circumstances, there is palpable relief in small moments that dissolve this anxious intensity—in recalled memories of home, in glimpses of laughter and love, in wrestling with writing to give voice to unspeakable experiences, and, for one of them, in conversations with a bird which provides a constant ear at a time when there is no one else to listen. 

'This plays is about gazing, observing, searching in empty spaces,  expressing, and reflecting on being of oneself and others within one’s own culture and the host culture in times of loneliness hoping for being heard and recognised.' (Production summary)

Notes

  • Author's note: As part of my exilic writing and theatre – this production is dedicated to Mahsa Amini and the Woman-Life-Freedom revolution in Iran.

Production Details

  • Performed at La Mama Courthouse, Carlton Victoria : 2-13 August 2023.

    Director by Mammad Aidani

    Actors: Reza Kaviani, Sepideh Karimi, Faraz Safari, Mohammad (Ramin) Montazeri Kordi

    Lighting Designer: Caitlin Duff

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

Works about this Work

Theatre Review : I Said This To the Bird, La Mama Courthouse Lakshmi Ganapathy , 2023 single work review
— Appears in: ArtsHub , August 2023;

— Review of I Said This to the Bird Mammad Aidani , 2023 single work drama

'Performed entirely in Farsi, Dr Mammad Aidani’s bold provocation to the establishment struggles to affect.' 

A Play Wright in Exile : Mammad Aidani Russell Fewster , 2023 single work criticism
— Appears in: Australasian Drama Studies , 1 April no. 82 2023; (p. 201-228)
'Mammad Aidani's books, such as Narrative and Violence: Ways of Suffering Amongst Iranian Men in Diaspora, and plays, such as In the Mirror [La Mama 2021] and I Said This to the Bird [IPCS 2022 and La Mama 2023], explore what it is to be displaced in the modern world. For Aidani, the experience is one of 'catastrophe' and he argues that there is a compelling need for greater national and international recognition of the challenges of exile. Nonetheless, his works seek to find the humanity within exile, and explore what hope emerges when the need for human fellowship is realised.' 

(Publication abstract)

Theatre Review : I Said This To the Bird, La Mama Courthouse Lakshmi Ganapathy , 2023 single work review
— Appears in: ArtsHub , August 2023;

— Review of I Said This to the Bird Mammad Aidani , 2023 single work drama

'Performed entirely in Farsi, Dr Mammad Aidani’s bold provocation to the establishment struggles to affect.' 

A Play Wright in Exile : Mammad Aidani Russell Fewster , 2023 single work criticism
— Appears in: Australasian Drama Studies , 1 April no. 82 2023; (p. 201-228)
'Mammad Aidani's books, such as Narrative and Violence: Ways of Suffering Amongst Iranian Men in Diaspora, and plays, such as In the Mirror [La Mama 2021] and I Said This to the Bird [IPCS 2022 and La Mama 2023], explore what it is to be displaced in the modern world. For Aidani, the experience is one of 'catastrophe' and he argues that there is a compelling need for greater national and international recognition of the challenges of exile. Nonetheless, his works seek to find the humanity within exile, and explore what hope emerges when the need for human fellowship is realised.' 

(Publication abstract)

Last amended 1 Aug 2023 10:59:26
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