What follows is the result of an idea to connect the field of philosophy and thought with the world of drama. Let us choose sentences to ponder from the statements of the members of the philosophical group, which are archived in the “Chistiha Blog” (http://chistiha.blogfa.com); and after manipulating the concepts of those statements, and doing a brief exercise and editing, let us create a dramatic idea that will continue to form another dialogue, another concept, and another thought.
In the principles of drama writing, “ideation” and “drafting” have a specific method; but we tried to be one step before the idea and the plot. At the same stage of mental spark or, in our own words, the “study” stage, where the writer’s hand is open to writing down any image, concept, or point. Here, we have not limited ourselves to not mentioning the technical instructions, performance arrangements, dialogue, staging, and other matters, and left them for more detailed plans; on the contrary, we have completely written down whatever came to mind at the moment.
During our group meetings, we came to the conclusion that it was not necessary to obtain refined and precise plans from our conversations. It was only necessary to immediately edit and record everything that came to mind in an instant as a “study.”
And now we share the same with you. May these exercises and sketches be the beginning of a path to step on a bridge between philosophy and drama.
Ideas on the Bridge from Philosophy to Drama: Etude One Hundred and Seventeen
Note: These sketches have been registered with the Islamic Culture and Guidance Department. And the intellectual property belongs to the author.
These sketches are only allowed to be republished on the “Chistiha” site.
Idea number one hundred and eleventh
Etude 111
Gilles Deleuze says: “What do you do when your work is cinema? And what do I do when my work is philosophy? … Ideas are possibilities (probabilities – potentialities). But they are already inseparable from a method or methods of expression. Ideas cannot be separated from these methods of expression. To the extent that I cannot say that I have an idea in my head in a general and general way. Depending on the techniques with which I am familiar, the possibility of ideas is provided to me, whether it is in cinema or in philosophy… The creator does not invent for the sake of entertainment. He absolutely needs to do it.”
Now, from these words of Gilles Deleuze, we turn to the world around us to see whether this need for idea generation is necessary. These days, we are faced with a news story from two perspectives regarding “the US claim that not a single person was killed in the IRGC missile attack and, on the contrary, the Iranian side’s claim that dozens of people were killed.”
What should we do with this news? First, we doubt. And we examine this doubt and question from a different angle than our normal mind: We ask, is this news? Then we ask, where did it come from? From the media. What is this media itself? A human creation.
Now we think about it. We see that everything about human life is distorted in this mirror and reality takes on a new form.
An idea comes to our mind:
Let’s use this mirror-in-mirror technique…
A short film that:
First, it starts with a person sitting in a room – similar to a guard room – and his usual times and a simple action like turning on the TV. And hearing such news (similar to the news above). And then by changing the channel, another news, which is opposite and contradictory to the previous news. And then, after a few cuts, we realize that the camera has changed from its objective and impartial observer mode, and we are seeing this person from the angle of another camera – similar to a CCTV camera. And then, with a cut, we see the same movement of that person in the frame of a television in another room that belongs to a news agency. The colors of these shots are warmer than the initial shots. And in parallel, another image of the same person, almost in different clothes and with a different body type, on another television; the colors of these shots are colder than the initial shots. And so each time these televisions show us in different places, for example, in a passage, a room in a hospital, a sports club, etc., and each time we have a news source and a popular event. Ordinary people who are themselves subjects for news agencies and news agencies that should be reliable and trustworthy by the people and we doubt that they are.
Until finally we reach where we were at the beginning. And that first person turns off his television, following his doubts about the initial news, and goes to the window and pulls aside the curtain, opens his locked window, takes a deep breath and stares into the distance at the community, the street, the square, and whatever it is; and that’s it.
To complete this initial study, we can also draw on Bourdieu’s theories on the role of the media.
Author: B. Khosravani
It is recalled that any copying and extraction of these ideas, from an ethical and legal perspective, is only possible by mentioning the address, and use for performance will only be possible if the author’s written consent is obtained.