Photo: Gavin Doran.
“Song of the North” involves 483 puppets, 208 animated backgrounds, 16 masks and costumes and nine performers.
Here’s how an incredibly creative Iranian is showing the world something deeper than the stereotypes about his home country.
Jennifer Schuessler wrote about his puppet epic at the New York Times in March.
“On a recent afternoon on 42nd Street in Manhattan, a mythological bird was preparing to take flight. Backstage at the New Victory Theater, a black-clad puppeteer put on an elaborately stylized mask and stepped into a beam of light, throwing the shadow of fluttering hands onto a large scrim.
“Nearby, two other performers were gearing up to practice a sword fight. Then the music started, and a crew of nine began a full run-through of Song of the North, an elaborate shadow puppet staging of stories from the 10th-century Persian epic the Shahnameh.
“From the audience, the show unfolded like a seamless animation. But backstage, the next 80 minutes were half ballet, half mad scramble, as the performers grabbed hundreds of different puppets, props and masks stacked on tables and, with split-second timing, jumped in and out of the light beams streaming from two projectors.
“Leaning against a backstage wall was the show’s creator, Hamid Rahmanian. His role? ‘Stressing out,’ he said.
“Since premiering in 2022 in Paris, Song of the North (which is intended for audiences 8 and older) has received enthusiastic reviews and played to packed houses on three continents. Its arrival in the heart of Times Square [was] timed for Nowruz, the Persian new year celebration. It also coincides with the release of a new contemporary prose translation of the Shahnameh that Rahmanian produced in collaboration with the scholar Ahmad Sadri — the first complete English version by Iranians, Rahmanian said.
“The show is mind-dizzyingly complex, involving 483 puppets, 208 animated backgrounds, 16 character masks and costumes and nine performers who follow more than 2,300 separate cues.
“But the idea behind it, Rahmanian said, is simple: to bring the richness of Persian culture to young audiences and adults whose views of Iran may be dominated by negative stereotypes.
“ ‘Everything about Iran is seen through the lens of politics,’ he said. ‘Iranian culture is a symphony. But in the West, we only hear the drumbeat.’
“The Shahnameh, or Book of Kings, is said to be the longest poem ever written by a single author — twice as long as the Iliad and the Odyssey combined. It was composed by the Persian poet Abu al-Qasem Ferdowsi, who spent 33 years turning centuries of historical and mythological lore into more than 50,000 couplets.
“In Iran, where many people give their children names of characters (Rostom, Sohrab), it remains a cultural touchstone. But growing up in Tehran, Rahmanian, now 56, was resistant to his father’s admonitions to actually read it.
“He was more drawn to visual art, and by 19, he said, had founded his own graphic design business. In 1994, he moved to New York to study computer animation at the Pratt Institute. In 1996, he was hired by Disney, where he worked on projects like Tarzan … but he felt like he didn’t fit in, and left two years later. …
“In 2008, Hamid pivoted to what has become his life’s work: promoting the Shahnameh. … Rahmanian was inspired to create a theatrical piece after seeing a restored version of Lotte Reiniger’s 1926 silent film The Adventures of Prince Achmed, believed to be the oldest surviving full-length animated film. ‘I thought, “I want to do something like that!” ‘ he said. …
“Nazgol Ansarinia, a visual artist visiting from Tehran who was watching backstage, said she was amazed by both the intricacies of the performance and the immediacy of the storytelling.
“ ‘In Iran, everyone knows the stories and characters from the Shahnameh, but the text itself is not that accessible,’ she said. ‘Hamid has really made it accessible.’ ”
More at the Times, here. Beautiful photos and videos.
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