Dariush Asadzadeh Transcript and Audio

Part 01

In Dialogue with Dariush Asadzadeh
Part 1
The Journey from Early years into youth

During the First World War my father was taken captive in Hamedan.

After 14 months when the war had ended, he goes to the city of Sarakhs

and looks for a job at the eastern war brigade, where he was recognized and got a position.

He met with the daughter of one of the officers and got married there and then.

He was transferred to Kermanshah where I was born on the 23rd of November 1923.

After 5, 6 years he was transferred to Tehran, My father was from Tehran, his home was in Adib ol-Mamalek Street.

We lived there and went to a school called Tarraqi nearby.

I then went to Tejarat [1934-1935] School for my secondary education;

I had already become interested in Arts, now why?

Because from my early teens my father would encourage me by taking me to Sa’adat theater in Cheraagh bargh Street in Pamenar

which would be an open air theatre over the three months of summer.

They would do lots of Siah-Bazi plays, and you know how humorous those traditional plays were,

we would go for a good laugh and time well spent. This was part of the reason why I became interested.

So when I acquired my high school Diploma, I got into acting school in 1940 without my father knowing.

Let me tell you this as well, my father was completely against me going into acting,

when he found out he was fuming with anger, he even kicked me out of the house,

cut the story short my aunts and uncles intervened and I went back home. He talked to me after a few days and said to me

“you must become a person of position and rank in this country, what you have gone into is not cut out for you”.

Reza Shah had ordered at the time that anyone admitted into the military academy must be the son of an officer.

My father was so he sent me to the military high school and my brother to the military elementary school.

I could not tolerate it for more than two days, I left the second day.

We had to be home by 4 or 5 pm. I was never home by that time.

From 8 am to 2 pm and then from 2 till 4 pm I would attend high school. And then from 4 to 8 pm I would be at art school.

My father would ask my mother where I was, and she would say that ‘he is studying with his friends’.

It was obvious after a few days that we couldn’t be studying.

When he found out, he got angry again and threw me out of the house again.

I stayed with my uncle for a while till I went back and stopped attending art school.

At The Officers’ Academy, they wore very nice uniforms, I got interested and enrolled,

we had to take physical tests, I was healthy and got in.

I went home and told my mom that I would be leaving on the coming Saturday as I had enrolled at The Officers’ Academy that was also a boarding school.

She said “have you told your father?” I said no, she said “tell him” and I told her I couldn’t.

He was sitting in the next room, she went and told him.

He got angry again, shouting and screaming, “you ought to be ashamed, you want to become an officer?

You want to stand at junctions and go like this (making gestures) is that what you want to do?”,

so that I couldn’t do either (chuckles). Whatever I wanted to do he was against it.

I had to go through the same thing for music school as well.

Before going to music school, I worked during the summers, [interviewer: where?] at a pharmacy.

I had saved up and bought a violin with my money.

I had gone to lessons with Reza Mahjoubi, late father of the musician Mahjoubi, and had learnt pieces without reading notes.

There was one that went like ‘the boogeyman will eat me up, I can hear him come so I will hide…’ .

One day when my dad was not home, he was supposed to be at work, and my mother was in the other room, I was practicing,

when all of a sudden he walked in and saw me singing and playing my instrument, he stood there staring at me and said

“so the boogeyman will eat you up huh? Are you really not ashamed of yourself? I just know you are going to become a cheap musician”,

he grabbed my violin, now you have to remember I had worked from dawn to dusk for three months to buy it and he did not know,

he broke it, and then ran after me to hit me too but I escaped. I cried.

But then later when I went to acting school, he had become tired of it all and so he did not say anything to stop me.

[Starless Man, directed by Azizollah Bahadori]

In 1938 a resolution was passed for Intellectual development, this was aimed for the ‘enlightenment of public thoughts and opinions’

by which they would talk to people in speeches and presentations and familiarize them with the notions this act involved.

Part of it was dedicated to ‘plays’,

Seyyed Ali Nasr who was from a respectable background, had introduced the idea of Iranian Comedy in 1926,

when this resolution was passed, Nasr became headmaster of the school of Acting and Drama,

which was located in Lalehzar, and was founded in 1939.

There were individuals at the time who had been very active in theatre productions who became mentors and teachers at this school;

for example musician Rokneddin Mokhtari, Fazlollah Baygan, Moezz-Divan Fekri,

Rafi’ Halati who went by the pseudonym Hajjar [pictured with Ali Asghar Garmsiri] who was a mentee of Kamal-ol-Molk,

there were many who had worked in theatre and drama, and before them were people like Akhoundzade and Tabrizi,

they all became our tutors at the School of Acting and drama, and directed plays at the same time,

Moezz-Divan Fekri was the son of Moadab-ol-Mamalek, a renowned writer and journalist,

these tutors were all exceptional and respectable individuals, he knew music, he knew notes, he knew theatre; this is what are tutors were like.

At lessons, he would teach us music, violin, notes, décor and set,

I remember for an exam each of us were to make a model and bring in,

I was asked to make the model of Emperor Kourosh’s tomb,

I got Eremurus as glue, there wasn’t much more at the time, with card

and went home and sat to make it from the beginning of the night till nearly 4 or 5 in the morning,

it looked ok, it was cold and I left on the shelf to dry and fell asleep at the early hours of the morning.

When I woke up I found the model had dried and crumpled up.

I was shocked and thought to myself, ‘what should I take? This is not Kourosh’s tomb’,

I thought I will just go and tell the truth and say that I honestly tried but couldn’t do better with what I had. So I went.

Everyone was called one by one and was given a grade, when it was my turn he asked me ‘what is this?’

I said with fear ‘it’s Kourosh’s tomb’ and he replied back ‘Kourosh’s tomb or your father’s tomb? [laughs];

I said it turned out like this despite I tried my best, believe me sir I worked from 7 pm to dawn on it.

He gave me 7 and said ‘this is because you tried’, we were quite fearful of our tutors.

Seyyed Ali Nasr taught us literature and the History of theatre, each one had their own specialty.

[part of the film ‘Safe journey’ directed by Dariush Moadabbian]

I graduated and meanwhile to gain my father’s consent, I enrolled the Ministry of Finance’s high school [Diploma Pictured],

when I finished I became the head of the warranties branch of the ministry, I was very young, about 21 years old,

at the time through connections I was to become the head of Qazvin’s department of Finance,

when I went to get my transfer order signed the director looked at me and said

“who you can handle this position, I don’t think this is the right job for you, this needs someone experienced, you want to become the head of Qazvin Department?”,

I said to him “who do you think won the war in World War 2? It was all the young Russian Generals who did”

he said “get out, get out” and crossed and cancelled the order.

I did go in the end though when another minister came, I persevered and insisted, I was young.

I worked for 24 years, and there were so many work opportunities for me in the arts, cinema and theater that I resigned and retired.

Interviewer: You went to university as well?

Yes I did.

Interviewer: which one?

School of Law.

Interviewer: when was that?

when I worked at the ministry of finance, I had opportunities that supported my endeavors, I became inspector in Zabol, or head buyer of grains,

I was constantly travelling and my expenses were paid for, I was paid by the kilometer as well as I travelled,

and so instead I couldn’t excel at law school and so couldn’t carry on.

Although I went back later on and succeeded.

Anyhow, I then wrote and directed theatre plays, I wrote about 20,

and I still have the relevant licenses and documentation for them which I had acquired from the Ministry of Arts and Culture.

I also acted in 200 plays.

When Tehran Theater opened, before that there was no proper theater,

writers like Saeed Nafisi, Mohammad Ali Foroughi, would translate foreign plays

and others like Fekri and Baygan would bring them on stage for a night or two at Circus Hall or Atabak Hall which is now part of the Embassy of Russia.

All these individuals didn’t do this for the money,

Mr. Halati himself had written once of a play he took to stage for two nights with minor and minimal outcome

he did not know how to split between those involved.

In 1940 when Seyyed Ali Nasr founded the School of Drama, there was a hall that belonged to Grand Hotel,

he hired that hall and founded Tehran Theater there and then.

The grand Hotel building belonged to someone called Bagher Khan (Baggirov),

the hall was similar to that of Khorshid cinema situated in Islambul street,

it was built by the Russians, in an oval form and divided into stalls,

this hall, Tehran theater became the main base for theater in Iran, it was the first permanent theater founded.

And at the time people were still unfamiliar with theatrical drama and they had only ever experienced traditional Iranian plays,

so they would hardly ever go to the theater.

In order to attract them, music played a great role,

and it was mainly Moezz-Divan Fekri’s idea as he was a musician,

he would write the music and lyrics himself, and this made it more appealing to people.

They would usually use pieces by Molière as they were the most adaptable to Iranian taste,

for example ‘The Miser (L’Avare)’ or ‘The Bourgeois Gentleman (Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme) and so forth.

So people were gradually familiarized with the idea of the theater.

Later graduates of the School of Theater and Drama would get together and find other theaters in Lalehzar for example, Gohar theater or Honar theater;

with Dehqan theater there was a different story to it, Initially when Lalehzar became a cultural hub, Dehqan did not exist,

at the time Seyyed Ali Nasr had become more popular and became Iran’s ambassador to China and Pakistan,

his positions were sensitive so he left the management of Tehran theater to his Deputy Mr. Dehqan,

who had attend an art school founded by Ovanes Ohanian [pictured] founded in 1928.

So Nasr had appointed him as his deputy because he was familiar with artistic notions.

Around 1952 when Nasr was delegated his mission to China, Dehqan took over.

Dehqan was a very clever person, he had bought a journal from Mr. Halat called ‘Tehran Mosavvar’ (Tehran in pictures) and became director of that journal later,

he made lots of connections and also managed to find links to the royal court. He was later killed over a different issue.

There is a little street down Lalehzar which has now become the marketplace for electric goods,

which was home to the acting school that we attended.

There was a big garden that was owned by Ala-oddoleh, the school was right next to it.

At the time, unlike these days there were no ventilation facilities so during the summer, Tehran Theater had to stay closed.

So what they did was they turned that garden into an open air theater for the hot season.

Therefore when Dehqan was killed, they named that location after him.

[pictured from right to left, first row: Rafi’ Halati, Moezz-Divan Fekri, Esmail Mehrtash, Enayatollah Shabani, Molouk Zarrabi, Ne’mat Moayyeri; 2nd row: Nosrat Karimi, Ms. Fekri, Iran DaftariForough Sahami, Ruqayyeh Chehreh Azad, Jamshid Sheybani,m Garmsiri, Ms. Sfavi, Sahahin Far, Hamid Ghanbari; 3rd row: Tabesh, Iran Ghaderi, Amini, Eshraghi, Ms. Loreta, Rouhbakhsh, Shahla Riahi, Majid Mohseni; 4th row: Morteza Ahmadi, Sarhang Shab-Pareh, Oskoui, Ghadakshian, Abbas Zahedi, Esmail Riahi; 5th row: Beheshti, Badri Hourfar- Mofid]

The first play I ever did was with Moezz-Divan Fekri, it was a comedy narration of Leyli & Majnun,

Leyli had gone to heaven and Majnun was stuck in hell, I had to go from hell to heaven.

We didn’t have as much to work with like nowadays.

For me they had taken a stick, put a concave tin on top which held within it a piece of oiled cotton wool,

I would barge towards the set which was made to look like heaven holding that thing lit up.

In those days sets were not equipped like the ones today, there weren’t so many projectors in all directions.

There were a few fixed lamps on the edge of the stage and some fixed on the ceiling lighting up the many drapes which were hanging.

As I was walking on stage, and I was quite tall, I didn’t realize that the flame had caused fire to one of the drapes,

I moved towards the back of the stage and noticed chuckles from the crowd,

I thought to myself I must have done something they liked,

so moving forward all the drapes caught fire one by one,

and you could see that suddenly the crowd of spectators started escaping the theater all together.

Now the person in charge of the curtains and drapes should have pulled them up at the very beginning but he had gone to smoke a cigarette at the back.

He realized very late that he had to do something but all the people had left already [chuckles]

I was looking at it all in shock not knowing that in fact I had caused the fire,

Dehqan came to and angrily said don’t you realize you shouldn’t hold this flame so high,

and I said how I am supposed to know especially with the act I was supposed to do;

now this was my first time on stage which I will never forget.

I stayed at Tehran Theater and did all my work there for 30 years,

I became manager both for Tehran and Nasr theaters, until the events that pushed me to leave.