Review: Siyavash by Philip Kreyche, Wit's End Theatre Project
by Michael Meigs
That Philip Kreyche is a dab hand at theatre, a young man with imagination and a taste for the exotic. His earlier piece Love Me was an expressionist treatment of incidents in the life of the Austrian expressionist painter Oskar Kokoschka. He staged it first at a summer workshop at Austin Community College and then brought it back for FronteraFest.
I hadn't heard of Kokoschka. Kreyche's piece prompted me to do some research -- which means, these days, hitting Google and musing over the reduced-size images of the weird and wonderful portraits for which Kokoschka is famous. And during the summer while wandering in Stockholm's Moderna Museet, I came face-to-face with Kokoschka's larger than life size portrait of Joseph de Montesquiou-Fezensac. It was an eerie, satisfying moment, one that I owe to Kreyche's reach beyond the ordinary.
Kreyche and friends staged his second original script earlier this month at the woods at the southwest corner of Dittmar and South First, 'way south in Austin. Company member and colleague to Kreyche Ryan Manning explained that their Wit's End Theatre Project takes its name from that piece of ground: Witt's End, formerly a stopping point and campground for visitors to Austin.
The sources for Siyâvash are about as distant as possible from the sources for Love Me. The artistic style is equally far removed. In his narrow-sheet program Kreyche situates the spectator: the story is one of dozens contained in the Shâhnâmeh, the Persian Book of Kings written between 977 and 1010 by Firdusi, and the style is inspired by traditional Iranian theatre of bardic storytelling and passion theatre. "The style is very big, grandiose, operatic, and stylized."
Traditional performances can last for hours; in contrast, Siyâvash ran for about 40 minutes as dusk turned into dark. The company had moved up the start time to 6:30 but not all of the spectators had succeeded in finding the place by that time. I got lucky; I got a glimpse of guys in bathrobes and turbans back under the trees, so I made a U-turn on Dittmar and searched out the hand-lettered sign on South First just south of the intersection.
Siyâvash is a hero, larger than life and purer than an ordinary mortal. In Persian folklore he is the embodiment of innocence. The story is one of intrigues in the palace, in the harem and on the battlefield. Siyâvash turns down the advances of his stepmother Sudabeth and spends time in the harem in pleasant conversation with the women there; infuriated, Sudabeth tells her husband the Shah that Siyâvash has raped her. The young man proves by trial of fire that he is pure and intercedes to stop the execution of his stepmother. In like manner, the noble innocent is subjected to dilemmas at court, in battle, in peace parleys and at war, eventually departing his homeland to live in Turân (Teheran?). Quite unexpectedly for the uninformed audience, the story ends with the abrupt execution of Siyâvash. Wikipedia gives a full summary of the story.
Austin actors doing a version of Persian bardic passion plays? Isn't that like white guys doing hip-hop (before white guys started doing hip-hop)? Yes and no. Story telling and declamation are common to virtually all cultures, and once the spectator grasps and accepts the form, all the strangeness drops away. Wit's End did not intend this to be fully representational enactment; if they had, perhaps we would have seen Kreyche jumping a black stallion across a fire pit. The open forest setting became a green world like those in Shakespeare, where by our common consent magic became possible.
Mind you, at times we did have to drop those barriers to disbelief a bit more and take an additional slug from the white wine in the paper cup. Nick Edwards as counselor Rostam the Mighty was wearing a horned Viking helmet and Simon Day delivered his emphatic, well articulated lines in an accent with more traces of Cheapside than of Shiraz. But their seriousness in the endeavor and the appeal of the developing story were more than enough to keep us all focused.
Playwright-manager-director-actor Kreyche fashioned a script in vigorous blank verse and took the central role of Siyâvash. Combining all those responsibilities for a staging is rare these days and somewhat risky, but the declamatory form provided a reassuring framework. Nicole Barnes played both the suitably wicked lustful stepmother (boo!) and, later, the princess in Turân who became his delighted bride (yay!). Ryan Manning and Sebastian Garcia were convincingly war-like adversaries, won over by the frank dealing of Siyâvash.
Thanks to Kreyche and company for their carpet ride toward Persian tradition. Where on earth (or in history) will they be taking us next? Despite the company name, it seems that they're nowhere near their wits' end.
EXTRA
Click to view narrow-sheet program for Siyâvash by Philip Kreyche
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Siyâvash
by traditional Persian, adapted by Philip Kreyche
Philip Kreyche
