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 seventeen
Etude 117
Movie
Temporary title: Madness
Location: Mashhad city
Time: June 2010
Characters:
Shida, 17, nursing student, first semester, from Yazd, unable to register for the fall semester due to her mother’s death and her father’s financial problems, and is one semester behind; very intelligent, who skipped one of the years of high school, and her overall high school GPA was 19.5.
Samira, 39, Shaida’s aunt, resident of Mashhad
Mahmoud Reza, 33, calligraphy instructor, senior graphic student, senior acting graduate, from Urmia, resident of Mashhad, married, whose wife and seven-year-old child are in Urmia.
Saba, Anusha, and Talia, Sheida’s roommates
Sheida, 24, Sheida’s sister
Nasir, 52, Sheida’s father, bankrupt and uninsured
Ali, 16, Samira’s son, emotional and isolated
Yaser, 34, Samira’s husband and Ali’s father
The structure of this film is such that we enter Samira’s mind entirely, and this is the central character who drives the story forward in the present.
The present is linear, and the flashbacks are entirely in the service of discovering events and feelings.
The theatrical convention is that in most of Samira’s conversations with people, there is a flashback to the past. At first, the audience gets the impression that this is the other person’s mind, and as soon as it cuts to the present, in another scene that was in the present, the audience realizes that they have been deceived, that the flashback was actually Samira’s mind, not the person she was talking to. This is the most important dramatic contract in the structure of this film.
The story begins with the height of the crisis. It is night. Samira is riding in a private car to the hospital; just half an hour ago, Shaida was brought there and admitted there, and Shaida’s friends have informed Samira that she committed suicide. The driver of the car is consoling Samira not to worry; I also committed suicide once and took a gulp of a gallon of Vitex. And they revived me with saline solution. And when Samira, in her ruined and broken state, asks the driver how did you do this? The driver answers for a moment of madness. That’s it. Samira is so scared that she has left her wallet at home. And she calls her son, Ali, on her mobile phone to arrange for the driver to return to Samira’s home address after the hospital and get money for the two-way trip from Ali. And Ali has no money, and we learn that there is not much love and affection in Samira’s house either, and there are problems between her husband, Ali, and her. And Samira is forced to shout at Ali to go borrow money from a neighbor, this man will come back to get the money from you. And he hangs up the phone. And her bad mood gets worse.
The continuation of the first scene is in the hospital emergency room, where Samira wants to approach Shaida in disbelief and fear, and Shaida, in a bad mood among her friends who have visited her, and the nurse and resident, notices Samira’s presence and shakes her head in denial. And Samira pulls back. As if she feels guilty. And she is to blame. Shaida’s friends have realized that she hates her aunt. And she is heartbroken.
The next scenes are related to Samira’s life and her struggle with the issues of Shaida’s hospitalization, who has fallen into a coma on the third day. And how should she deliver the news to Yazd. And how should she welcome her sister’s husband (Shaida’s father) and Shaida (Shaida’s sister) who have come to Mashhad. And many other issues, including her own life, Ali’s, and Yaser’s. And most of all, discovering the story of Shida and the whole story of these people, which is as follows:
Shida, who was accepted to Mashhad nursing school with a high GPA, lost her mother last semester. And her boyfriend in Yazd also left Yazd because he was accepted to Bandar Abbas University, and there was a distance between them, and she considers them Shida. Now that this semester has come, she has registered and, together with her father, has moved to a shared dormitory with three other girls. Saba, Anusha, and Talia, each of whom has a story. And among them, Shida has become friends with Anusha, who is more of a boyfriend than the other two, and is more into putting boys to work, so to speak; not loyalty in love. This friendship with Anusha has opened Shida’s eyes and ears more than that girl who lived in a small rented apartment in Yazd with a young housewife mother and an unemployed father. Shida’s father has always been unemployed and has received unemployment benefits, redeemed himself, or jumped from one branch to another, and in short, he has not been able to live a normal life. Last month, Maryam (Shida’s mother) passed away from cancer. Who is Mahmoud Reza? He is a calligraphy instructor and a graphic designer for a company in Urmia. He is married. He has a seven-year-old daughter. He was accepted to Mashhad University in the spring semester and came to study for a master’s degree in graphic design, which is also useful for his work. He previously had a master’s degree in acting, but he did not use his degree. Now, thanks to his calligraphy art, he has a class in the University of Mashhad’s Jihad Daneshgah, where he teaches calligraphy to students freely. Since Anusha is very interested in calligraphy, they took Shida with her and registered for calligraphy. And so far, they have attended five or six sessions. And during these visits, Anusha jokingly teased Sheida that Ostad (!) has his eye on you, and played such ridiculous games that are beyond the bounds of a Yazdi girl who herself is in love, and she believed that there must be a relationship between the two and that the girls do not know that Mahmoud Reza is married because he does not have a ring on his hand. Once or twice, when it was evening and Mahmoud Reza had taken the girls to their dormitory room, Sheida sat in front and even reached out once and changed the CD on the radio, and the good feeling that remained from the smell of Ostad’s (!) Peugeot 206 car was ecstatic for her. And in short, these feelings belong to a high school girl. The dormitory room is also nowhere but a dark, dark basement. Behind the engine room of an old apartment. From time to time, cockroaches invade, and all four girls are in the throes of a struggle to clean and get rid of the cockroaches. And they always have to buy poison and insecticide from the supermarket down the street, whose shopkeeper is a young boy.
What is Ali’s story? As soon as he learned of Shida’s acceptance to Mashhad University, Ali was happy. Since childhood, he had been obsessed with the distant love of this cousin. The love of a high school boy. With those pimples on his nose and forehead. And a face that is ugly in itself. And this issue of Ali’s love for Shida, as well as the differences between Samira and Yaser, has caused Yaser to not allow Shida to come to his aunt’s house. And this has caused Shida to be lonely, and no matter what Samira has done, she has not been able to make Shida happy. Yaser is from Mashhad, and Samira came to Mashhad from Yazd after marriage. And she has never seen Yazd again. She has also been involved in her husband’s financial problems and problems all her life. Samira seeks to help Shida throughout the story so that she can survive. On the third day, Shida goes into a coma and remains in this state for three weeks, and finally dies in late June. And the death of Sheida leaves a very negative impact on Ali, so much so that he commits suicide with the same rice pill and in Sheida’s way. And again the first scene of the film is repeated and Samira comes running to the emergency room. And this time her son is on that bed. And a few days pass. And Ali moves his eyelids and his hand. And we understand that he is alive and has survived. And he survives. But what survival. And this is the end of the film.
And as for the relationship between Shaida and Mahmoud Reza. The story is narrated by Anusha to Samira and we witness that story through flashbacks. Shaida, in an unconsidered act and at the height of her joy, tells Mahmoud Reza that she has fallen in love with him and wants to marry him. And that is in a restaurant near the university (where she had gone several times with her other friends Saba, Anusha, and Taliyah because it was cheap); while both of them have ordered bitter coffee. And first there is this joke that, well, who will count? And Mahmoud Reza says with a laugh: You will count. And finally, after a few more jokes, Mahmoud Reza finally says that he has a wife and a seven-year-old daughter. And he cannot accept such a request and he cannot believe that a seventeen-year-old girl would make such a request so frankly. And so, mockingly, and with his good Urmia face, those laughs so touched Shaida that in another ill-considered move, Shaida spilled the coffee on all the sketches, lines, paintings, and calligraphy that he had painstakingly drawn, got up, and left the restaurant. And he went straight to buy rice tablets from the supermarket on the alley of their dormitory, with a thousand tricks and tricks and acting to the shopkeeper that we were feeling sick in this dark, filthy room full of cockroaches, mice, and other insects. And he was also skeptical but finally convinced and sold it. And Shaida swallowed both packets of rice tablets in the dormitory bathroom, and drank water on it, and collected his thoughts. And then it was Tayyeh and Saba who called the emergency room and took him to the hospital. And that bad mood; that he told the whole story of the restaurant to Tayyeh and Saba; and at the same time, crying and wailing and that bad mood, and finally unconsciousness. Right next to the other girls and women who were hospitalized that night and the days after that for suicide. And of course, there are also boys and men in that hospital who have committed horrific suicides. And most of them did not survive. And Samira witnesses all of this during these three weeks.
And as for Mahmoud Reza, who, in order to cover up such a disgrace, has to please Samira by any means necessary so that the matter does not leak out at the university. And he has to talk to all three of Sheida’s friends. And he has stopped his classes. Under the pretext of the June exams. And he is confused and his conscience is tormented. Mahmoud Reza has become a victim of her good face. And he, who has had to work and teach calligraphy for a piece of bread, is perhaps the least guilty.
And Yaser, who is heartbroken because he did not let Sheida into his house. And he is afraid that Sheida’s recklessness will help their son.
And Sheida’s sad story is a tragedy in itself. He has not lived together for more than a year and a half. And the groom at home (which is also the rented house of Nasir – the father of Shideh and Shida – which is a small, two-bedroom apartment) had a strange intellectual conflict with Shideh, and these past year and a half have become the worst and most painful years of Shideh’s life. And finally, she got divorced. And it was after Shideh’s divorce that Shideh returned to the room she shared with her sister. Otherwise, for these past year and a half, Shideh had to sleep in the living room. And by chance, Shideh noticed that in the middle of the night, the groom was standing in the living room, staring at Shideh’s arms that were sticking out from under the sheets. And this caused a serious disagreement between them, and their noise woke up Yaser and their sick mother, Maryam. And after that night, Shideh was no longer able to calm her down. And finally, she got divorced without a dowry. Samira has to be resilient throughout this film. And melt away bit by bit. She has talked to everyone. With Shideh’s friends. With Shideh’s father and sister. With Mahmoud Reza. And with Ali and Yasser. Samira also has a relationship with Imam Reza. Every time she sees the shrine, especially during the call to prayer, she bows to the shrine. And she seeks help and remembers the time she went to the shrine with Shaida. This memory keeps repeating. Now that Shaida has died, she wants to make things right and wants to rebuild her life with Yasser; but at that moment, she is faced with Ali’s suicide. Which was exactly the same as Shaida and the rice pills. But Ali only managed to eat half of the pills in a packet. And Samira has arrived right at the right time. And now what is the task?
These characters, each of whom has personal problems with money and in their relationships with each other; they are all victims of the difficult situation of life in this society. The urban middle class is on the verge of collapse. And financial problems have bent the backs of families. And that too after modernization and urbanization, unemployment and lack of production. Bad relationships between people are the result of inexperience in social life. The lack of participation of the people in the comprehensive development of society. The distance from rationality. And the necessity of living in deep valleys of failure, defeat, loneliness, foolishness, and disbelief.
This idea could go another way, focusing heavily on Ali’s character. And we should worry about Ali more than even Sheida.
We need to show this generation. And the girls who are getting fat. And the boys who are getting spoiled. From within this generation. Today’s generation. The problems of each of those three Sheida friends should be specific to this generation. And Ali’s problems should represent the son of this generation.
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.