The Desire to Write
An Interview with Jalal Tehrani
By Reza Ashofteh²
After seeing the first performance of The Tank, despite all the difficulties that accompany any premiere familiar to theatre practitioners, I was left with one overwhelming thought: Iranian theatre was witnessing an honorable production.
By the third performance, my conviction had only grown stronger. Honorable is perhaps the most fitting word to describe this revival, which Jalal Tehrani brought back to the stage at Molavi Hall nearly ten years after its original production, with the same principal cast.
The dignity of The Tank lies in the confidence it inspires in its audience. It presents itself as a genuine theatrical work, never resorting to tricks or distractions to conceal weaknesses in either the script or the performance.
(The Tank was scheduled to run at Molavi Hall until 12 February.)
Where does a play begin for you?
It always begins with the desire to write.
When reading The Tank, what struck me most wasn’t simply the plot or its unusual characters, but its distinctive language. The dialogue often recalls absurdist drama, yet the play remains fundamentally narrative and plot-driven. Certain words and phrases are repeated so frequently that they seem to lose their meaning, while simultaneously creating atmosphere.
The repetition isn’t intended to empty words of meaning. It’s intended to change their meaning. Repetition changes the rules of language between the audience and the play. As a word is repeated throughout the text, its field of meaning expands. Traditionally, repetition is associated with comedy. There, repetition transforms meaning and produces laughter. In The Tank, however, repetition rarely serves a comic purpose. Instead, it creates an atmosphere in which the meanings of words gradually shift.
Your writing seems connected to a long tradition of Iranian playwriting.
I don’t believe our modern playwriting tradition is much more than a century old.
Even so, playwrights such as Mirza Agha Tabrizi remain important predecessors.
Absolutely. Mirza Agha Tabrizi had never actually seen a Western-style theatre performance. He had experienced ru-hozi and ta’zieh, but he imagined what theatre might be and wrote remarkable plays based on that imagination. Even today, many playwrights have not reached his level.
Although The Tank never identifies a specific location, it still feels unmistakably Iranian. The gas station could be anywhere, yet the language, the relationships, and the characters’ fears all emerge from Iranian culture. It reminds me, in some ways, of Ismail Khalaj’s work, especially Moon in Scorpio.
One reason Khalaj’s plays remain so compelling is the texture of their language. At first, it sounds like everyday speech. But if you listen carefully, people don’t actually speak that way. Khalaj creates a theatrical language that evokes everyday conversation without reproducing it literally. That’s his unique achievement.
Reading The Tank, I also sensed echoes of earlier playwrights. Some of Dadashi’s dialogue reminded me of Ali Hatami—not because of the acting, but because of the rhythm and construction of the language.
Questions like that always lead to broad answers. Naturally, we’re indebted to everyone who came before us. We’ve all read Akhundov. We’ve all read Mirza Agha Tabrizi. But we also learn from the people who live beside us. For me, writing a play isn’t a process of production. It’s a process of discovery. It begins with one or two lines of dialogue. Gradually, the world of the play reveals itself—the relationships, its emotional and intellectual structure, and the forces that govern it. Only then do I begin shaping the work.
Nearly ten years have passed since the original production. How has your perspective as a director changed?
I’ve never been precious about my texts. Whether I’m directing them myself or someone else is directing them, I’m always willing to change them if necessary. During rehearsals for this production, I never felt that necessity. What changed wasn’t the text—it was our question. We approached the play from a different perspective, and the text answered those new questions perfectly. Had the text failed to answer them, I wouldn’t have forced the questions to fit the play. I would have rewritten the play. The text always comes first. Only after fully understanding its possibilities do I consider changing it. Because our perspective changed, new characters emerged—characters who had always existed implicitly within the text but now acquired physical presence onstage.
Characters such as Khanomi and Havoo are mentioned in the dialogue but never appeared in the original production. Why did you decide to stage them now?
The text itself doesn’t require them. Originally, everything happened inside a single enclosed space, and the audience learned about events outside solely through dialogue. But once our perspective changed, we began seeing aspects of the play we hadn’t noticed before. When a different point of view reveals new elements within the text, I don’t feel justified in removing them. They deserve to remain.
Some might argue that these characters don’t add new information to the plot.
Theatre isn’t simply about communicating information or constructing logical patterns. A performance is a single living event. Even moving a chair changes that event.
So an element can exist simply because it belongs to the performance?
Not simply because it belongs. It exists because our perspective allows us to perceive it. As writers and directors, we show audiences what we ourselves discover. People sometimes accuse my plays of being ambiguous. The truth is much simpler. If I don’t know what’s behind a wall, I don’t write about it. I only write what I’ve genuinely discovered. When my perspective changes, I discover something new. After that, I can’t pretend I haven’t seen it.
Sadegh Maleki’s performance attracted considerable attention. Some audience members even remarked that he hardly blinked. His stillness seemed to become a dramatic element in itself. Could we describe this as a minimalist acting style?
I don’t believe in applying stylistic labels to performances. If the underlying principles of a production are coherent, its style will emerge naturally. Our challenge isn’t style. It’s achieving complete unity. Everyone involved in this production works with extraordinary precision and dedication. We’re still moving toward that unity. Eventually, everything will come together.
Much of the dramatic action seems to unfold through language rather than physical movement.
In all my productions, the actors move very little. There’s a simple reason. Every movement onstage must have a purpose. And we only attempt what we can execute convincingly. If an actor performs actions they don’t truly understand simply because they feel obliged to, they lose authority onstage.
One fascinating aspect of the production is that, as our understanding grows, the stage itself seems to expand. It’s almost a cinematic shift in perspective achieved through theatrical means.
I don’t consciously try to expand the possibilities of theatre. If that happens, it happens naturally. One of the new questions guiding this production concerns the relationship between perspective and space. Changing perspective doesn’t mean moving from indoors to outdoors. It means allowing the space itself to transform. That’s why the actors remain largely fixed while the world around them shifts, rotates, and changes form. Ultimately, what we witness is the explosion of space itself.
Will we be seeing more of your work in theatre? I recently read that you’re planning to make a film.
What do you think?
I hope you stay in theatre.
Professionally speaking, whenever I find I can’t work in theatre, I turn to cinema. I need to keep creating. The plays I write need to be performed. In cinema, even if a project encounters difficulties, a finished film remains. In theatre, if rehearsals stop before opening night, the work remains permanently incomplete. A film can exist even if no one sees it. A theatre production exists only when it reaches the stage.
Still, I hope you’ll continue making theatre.
So do I. Right now, The Tank is alive. It continues to be performed, appears at festivals, and receives awards. It has become the production I always hoped it could be. If next year I find another text that can be realized just as fully, I’ll stage it. But first, I have to determine whether that’s truly possible.