The Persian poet Ferdowsi of Tous can be called Iran’s Shakespeare, and his The Shahnameh, Book of Kings, holds for Iranian culture the same position that the Odyssey and the Iliad holds for the West. It is an epic of monumental length, the world’s longest work by a single poet, and is the reason that Iran maintained their native language rather than fall under the spell of Arabic.
It is, like the Old Testament, the history of a people told in a fusion of mythical tales and a historical past.
Hamid Rahmanian is a film maker and graphic artist who in 2013 undertook to illustrate the Shahnameh. He has now transformed part of that effort to the stage as Feathers of Fire – A Persian Epic, a stunningly beautiful evening of lights, shadows and theatrical magic, in its final week at the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts.
Told through the art of shadow puppetry with the performers behind a scrim screen, the mythic aspects of the tale being told are expressed superbly and linked to a visual presentation that is all but intoxicating.
Rahmanian focuses his staging on the birth and ascension of Zaul from the second part of the Shahnameh, a story that has echoes of the Greek Oedipus; albeit a happier ending.
Zaul is born to King Saum, whose beloved queen dies while giving birth.
Beside himself with grief, and shocked by the infant’s hair which is flowing and white as snow, Saum takes him to the foothills of the Alborz Mountains where he abandons the babe to his fate.
But he is found by Simorgh, a phoenix who carries the child to her nest where she raises him as her own.
How Zaul regains his father’s love and his throne is the tale told in Feathers of Fire. That the story is related in a narrative straight line is the major flaw of the evening.
However, it is the artistry in the telling of that tale which should be filling seats wherever this show plays, for Rahmanian and his fellow artists display an elegance and skill in this production that is almost mythic itself.
(**Featured Image: Hamid Rahmanian with Puppet. — Courtesy of Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts)
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Feathers of Fire: A Persian Epic
Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts
Bram Goldsmith Theater
9390 N. Santa Monica Blvd, Beverly Hills, CA, 90210
Performance Dates:
Friday, October 20 – Sunday, October 29, 2017
Performance Schedule:
Tuesdays – Fridays at 7:30pm;
Saturdays and Sundays at 2pm & 7:30pm.
Tickets:
Single tickets: $35 – $125 (prices subject to change)
To Purchase Tickets or for Additional Information
Online – TheWallis.org/Feathers
By Phone – 310.746.4000
Box Office – Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts Ticket Services
9390 N. Santa Monica Blvd, Beverly Hills, CA, 90210
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