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Friday, January 24, 2025
Catching History on the Fly in Javaad Alipoor’s Trilogy
HowlRound Theatre Commons: Since 2016, I’ve written, directed, and performed in a trilogy of shows: The Believers are but Brothers, Rich Kids: A History of Shopping Malls in Tehran, and Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World.
A play interrogating the effect of technology on society integrates social media into the show for audience engagement. The trilogy The Believers are but Brothers, Rich Kids: A History of Shopping Malls in Tehran, and Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World bring audiences into a world of technology and its draw on young people to extremism. The shows used zoom and instagram to loop virtual audiences in with live in-person audiences, to both build the world of the play and increase its audience scope. A lot of time integrating these mediums can seem to be disillusioning, separating audiences from the live performance. But when technology is the center of the story does this integration make the play more real? It’s like theater in found places setting a play that takes place in a prison in a prison, just in the virtual realm. How can technology and other real world tech make the world of the play more real.
Seeing social media be incorporated into theatre on stage and as the stage speaks to a people who does interact through technology like that, especially since it was during the pandemic it let a lot of people work through living several different ways to get performance. As the article noted, the people did respond to the fact that it was live and that they wanted that connection. The first part of the article talked about ‘The Believers are but Brothers’ and the results on belief I have definitely seen in America as well. When I find a woman who plays games and posts about them I very often find videos that talk about the toxic masculinity of the men who play the same games. Some channels are even dedicated to the vile interactions that they are subjected to from men who seem like they have not ever met a woman. Other men online have stood with the women in the games they play and I find it funny that those men who are normal about women are typically ranked higher.
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A play interrogating the effect of technology on society integrates social media into the show for audience engagement. The trilogy The Believers are but Brothers, Rich Kids: A History of Shopping Malls in Tehran, and Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World bring audiences into a world of technology and its draw on young people to extremism. The shows used zoom and instagram to loop virtual audiences in with live in-person audiences, to both build the world of the play and increase its audience scope. A lot of time integrating these mediums can seem to be disillusioning, separating audiences from the live performance. But when technology is the center of the story does this integration make the play more real? It’s like theater in found places setting a play that takes place in a prison in a prison, just in the virtual realm. How can technology and other real world tech make the world of the play more real.
Seeing social media be incorporated into theatre on stage and as the stage speaks to a people who does interact through technology like that, especially since it was during the pandemic it let a lot of people work through living several different ways to get performance. As the article noted, the people did respond to the fact that it was live and that they wanted that connection. The first part of the article talked about ‘The Believers are but Brothers’ and the results on belief I have definitely seen in America as well. When I find a woman who plays games and posts about them I very often find videos that talk about the toxic masculinity of the men who play the same games. Some channels are even dedicated to the vile interactions that they are subjected to from men who seem like they have not ever met a woman. Other men online have stood with the women in the games they play and I find it funny that those men who are normal about women are typically ranked higher.
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