tank

The Tank

2011

Public Run: Molavi Theatre, Winter 2011

The Tank returned to the stage in 2011 after six months of rehearsals, this time with a

fundamentally new approach to the play. Jalal Tehrani’s return to the theatre after a seven-year absence was the principal catalyst for this reimagining. From the 2011 production of The Tank onward, Tehrani’s work increasingly distanced itself from  the direct stimulation of the audience’s emotions. The second production of The Tank is no longer an emotionally charged melodrama. In this new staging, the director brought all of the play’s previously unseen or implicit characters onto the stage, while introducing deliberately anti-sentimental passages through their presence. Combined with an original score by the distinguished Iranian composer Alireza Mashayekhi, these choices created a sustained effect of theatrical distancing. Nearly all spectators who had seen both productions—approximately ten years apart considered the original staging to be the more emotionally gripping one. Precisely for this  reason, the revival may be regarded as having achieved one of its principal artistic objectives: using largely the same ensemble of actors, it deliberately restrained the unbridled emotional intensity that had characterized the earlier production. One of the defining features of this revival was the collaboration with Alireza Mashayekhi as composer, whose music played a central role in shaping the production’s aesthetic. According to the Public Relations Office of Molavi Theatre, the 2011 production of The Tank became the most attended production in the theatre’s history since the venue was established in the 1970s.