Around the World on the Wings of Language and Imagination¹
Hafez Mousavi²
The simple yet highly imaginative production of Around the World in Eighty Days, written and directed by Jalal Tehrani and performed by Hamidreza Bodaghi and Shahin Sadeghian, is, in my view, a play that reveals the remarkable potential of language and imagination.
The story begins with an accident—a perfectly ordinary one, the kind that happens every day. Two strangers bump into each other and discover a bag. Neither of them knows who it belongs to. After a while, they realize that the bag contains a bomb, and the two men—a philosopher and an ordinary citizen—are suddenly confronted with a heavy responsibility they never sought. Bumping into someone on the street is itself a form of relationship in the modern world: an unavoidable and often unpleasant encounter.
It is also a meaningless relationship because no words have yet been exchanged. Between the two stands a sealed bag of meaning, and it is this bag that binds all the elements of the play together as a powerful metaphor. The philosopher opens the bag in search of meaning, attempting to understand and interpret what lies inside. Yet the meaning he extracts—through endless analysis and strict adherence to the methods of classical philosophical inquiry—proves increasingly uncertain. Each time he repeats the phrase, “probably,” he reinforces that uncertainty. The only unquestionable reality is the bomb itself, and it is the ordinary citizen who fears it.
The confrontation between the philosopher and the ordinary citizen becomes a confrontation between two different languages. Language is, on the one hand, what creates the possibility of a relationship, and on the other, what exposes the failure of communication. Which side of this paradox is true?
Descartes or Wittgenstein? Which approach offers liberation? The philosopher’s search for truth in the depths of the mind, or the ordinary citizen’s reliance on the solid ground of lived experience?
The play suggests that the answer is neither.
In Around the World in Eighty Days, it is imagination that ultimately brings the two characters together. It lifts them onto its wings and sends them on a journey around the world in the hope of defusing a bomb that could explode at any moment.
Loss of Meaning
An older man, a younger man, and an abandoned bag. Repeated sentences, repeated questions, and repeated movements gradually evolve into rhythmic patterns accompanied by music, mirroring the routines of everyday life. The play’s language games—its repetitions, seemingly disconnected combinations, and deliberate absence of conventional cause-and-effect logic—shape the dialogue between two figures, one who appears to be a philosopher and the other an ordinary man. One assumes the role of the rider; the other bears the burden.
Through understated, dry humour, the performances of Hamidreza Bodaghi and Shahin Sadeghian portray the struggle to define human identity. Beneath the repetitions of this two-character absurdist play lies a profound confrontation with the loss of meaning—a condition we know all too well, and one that continues to tighten its grip around our lives.