In the 21st Tajrobeh Theater Festival, “City Park,” also known as “Akbar Bazi,” took the stage as a collaborative effort between Iliya Giahchi and myself. Together, we aimed to establish a new milestone in the post-pandemic theatre landscape of the Middle East. This hybrid performance was held in a Telegram bot and the City Park of Tehran.
The Subject of this underground documentary piece was a social trauma that happened nearly 20 years ago in City Park. This unfortunate event resulted in the drowning deaths of six students in the park’s lake. What makes this tragedy peculiar is the government’s fabrication of a figure, Akbar Siah FakhrAbadi, as the one responsible for the incident. Over the past two decades, there has been a deliberate alteration and removal of archived documents from the internet, a move seemingly intended to conceal governmental corruption.
In this site-specific peformance, the Telegram bot assumed a performative role, leading the audience through the narrative and presenting relevant documents. Attendees had the liberty to stroll freely through the park, encountering five designated checkpoints. At each checkpoint, the audience engaged with a distinct facet of the story, strategically placed at different locations within the park as directed by the bot. At each of these locations, as the audience progressed, they discovered a fresh document unveiling a new chapter of the storyline.
Upon reaching the final checkpoint, attendees were encouraged to contribute by writing a letter and placing it in the mailbox located in front of the Post Museum—the symbolic place of origin for the narrative. The objective was to craft an immersive theatrical experience that remained inconspicuous to authorities, ensuring it could not be disrupted or halted as an underground, unofficial piece of public art. Despite its covert nature, the performance engaged with its audience openly in public spaces, allowing interaction and participation. In Iran, any form of street art lacking official approval is deemed illegal, particularly a performance addressing sensitive topics such as governmental corruption, making it unlikely to navigate the conventional channels of governmental arts surveillance.
[Video On YouTube]