The Theatre Workshop was established in 1969 after two successful performances, namely The City of Tales and A Modern Profound and Important Research about Fossils of the 25th Genealogic Period. It was located in a two-story building on Yousef Abad Street and was funded by National Iranian Television and Festival of Arts.
“The Theatre Workshop helps writers, actors, directors, and designers Exercise and experiment independent of commonly accepted professional restrictions.” This objective was presented at the beginning of the Theatre Workshops’s events and texts. It was brief, precise, and among the most practiced artistic manifestos in Iran. The word “design” in this statement refers to theatre posters, books, brochures, lighting, costumes, and set design. “A design in any format could be proposed to the Workshop’s council. If in line with the manifesto, the designer was provided with facilities, a place to practice, and performance time regardless of whether the designer was young, professional, or a member of the Theatre Bureau,” notes Arby Ovanesian in an interview after 35 years.
Members
Three generations of artists worked together in the Theatre Workshop. They were comprised of totally different tastes, cultural backgrounds, and social classes. Esmaeel Khalaj and his theatre group “Kouche” (which means “alley”), were a group of youth from the South of Tehran who improvised performances in alleys, streets, and among people. Arby Ovanesian, who had studied filmmaking in England and was strict about the details of scripts, rehearsals, and performances, established the “Shahr” theatre group (which means “city players”).
Assurbanipal Babilla studied philosophy and theology in Beirut. He was supposed to become a priest, but was fired from the church and became a rebellious artist who formed the “Ahreman” (“demon”) group. Abbas Nalbandian was a young paperboy who was discovered and recruited for the Workshop. His innovative screenplays were directed by various members, and he was in charge of the publication division. Shahrou Kheradmand and Iraj Anvar, who were among the Workshop’s founders, directed this experimental group. Finally, Bijan Saffari was the Theatre Workshop’s administrator.
Bijan Saffari
Bijan Saffari was the Workshop’s administrator from the official birth of the Theatre Workshop in 1969 until its death in April 1979. His manag ment style enabled the members of the Workshop to freely create, gain experience, and put themselves to the test free from the common concerns of the artistic communities. Saffari had studied architecture and was one of the main consultants of the National Radio and Television and Shiraz Festival of Arts, in addition to working in the Workshop. His other activities in these years included designing the set for the City Theatre and Daneshjou Park, restoring the Bagh-e Ferdows edifice, and designing posters, sets, and costumes for the Workshop’s plays. He translated two important books — Theatre and Culture and Theater East and West by Antonin Artaud.
Saffari was a professor at the Faculty of Decorative Arts. He and Houshang Kazemi were the first to train students to design posters and symbols in the early 1960s. Behzad Golapyegani and Hossein Zenderoudi attended these classes. One assignment was the design of a poster for an international Arts Festival in Shiraz, five years before the first Shiraz Festival of Arts was held.
Arbi Ovanesian
Arby was one of the founders of the Theatre Workshop and, later, the Chaharsou Hall of the City Theatre. His movie, Cheshme (which means “the spring”), was one of the building blocks of the Iranian New Wave in the early 1970s. He was also part of an influential collab oration with Peter Brook and Grotowski on their performances in the Shiraz Festival of Arts. Most of the Workshop’s plays were performed under Ovanesian’s direction.
Ovanesian designed some Theatre Workshop posters, as well as a template for the City Theatre’s posters. It was his idea to allocate the upper half of the City Theatre’s posters for the names of a play’s cast in sequence, between separator lines, and to include a photograph of a painting in the lower half. The posters of The Cherry Orchard and Little Eyolf, both designed by Fereydoun Ave, are examples. The photograph used in the poster of Little Eyolf is a woodblock print of a work by Edvard Munch. After Fereydoun Ave joined the Theater Workshop, he designed most of the posters for Ovanesian’s plays.
Fereydoun Ave
In 1971, Fereydoun Ave joined the Theatre Workshop to do his military service. He had studied “Applied Arts for Theatre” and “Film Aesthetics” in the United States and was the only designer in the Workshop who had received graphic- and theatre-related education. He designed theatre posters, brochures, lighting, costumes, and sets for the Theatre Workshop for seven years. Although Ave could not read and write Persian, he gained new experiences in working with Letraset lettering sheets. For instance, the Caligula poster was designed with this method. Ave was the most prolific graphic designer in the Theatre Workshop and designed the most posters, brochures, and books in the Workshop.
Ave designed two book covers for the Theatre Workshop: The Saved and Deathwatch. The Saved cover depicts a hand stretched from the back to the front cover, as if it is asking for help. Ave, who designs in a simple, straightforward manner, explains the reason he used the hand shape often during this period as, “the handiest thing I could find around me for designing was my own hand. I used to put it on the pap er and outline all around it with my other hand. Then I colored the inside or simply used the pencil sketch.” Ave designed the posters for Camisado and The Chant and Two Executioners with the same method. On the cover he designed for Deathwatch, the relation between the sketched naked posture and Jean Genet’s screenplay is evident.
Assurbanipal Babilla
Assur was the rebellious, disagreeable artist of the Workshop whose posters, paintings, photographs, and hardly follow the logic of the evolutionary trend of Iran’s contemporary art history. His posters such as The Killer Talks a Lot, La Ronde, Glaciation, and The Loot are unique in that period of Iran’s graphics. He had never received any academic training in the arts; his works were totally improvised and instantaneous experiences. There is no right or wrong when dealing with experience, and his works cannot be theoretically placed in any special category. Assur continued designing the posters for his own plays in Broadway, New York until his death four years ago.
Nameless, Dateless Posters
In the beginning, the Workshop posters had a unique composition — a vertical rectangle in the middle of the poster with the name of the play and the cast typeset underneath. The initial size of the posters was 40 by 60 and vertical. This format remained unchanged almost until Fereydoun Ave joined the team. He disrupted the order with the 50 by 70 horizontal poster he designed for The Chant and Two Executioners. Most of the posters for the Workshop have no performance date or designer’s signature.
“They have no performance date because the plays were performed continuously and periodically. In other words, a play might have been performed every week for years while it constantly changed and mutated. Hence, posters are like souvenirs of the performed plays. Posters do not have a designer’s signature because they were assumed to be part of an experimental activity in a workshop where the place and environment were superior to people. According to the Workshop’s manifest, we were supposed to prevent giving rise to any stars.”
Instead of writing dates on the posters, the Workshop regularly published the monthly schedule of performances. These brochures were printed on coated papers or light writing papers and were usually unicolor or bicolor. The papers, whose background color changed each month, included the name of the Theatre Workshop, the month and year of the program, and the National Iranian Radio and Television’s logo (designed by Mohammad Reza Aslani), since the Workshop did not have a logo of its own.
Let’s put a chair by the window and sit and watch the long, dark, silent, cold night of the desert.The idea for this poster was proposed by Nalbandian himself and Arby Ovanesian. It is not exactly clear who produced it, but a friend attributes it to the calligrapher Reza Mafi. It is one of the first Iranian graphic posters designed totally with type. This poster is registered in Iran’s Museum of Graphic Design as No. P698.
The Loot
The specificity of the poster The Loot is is due to its execution in the Workshop, in addition to its unconventional design. Atila Pesyani recalls how the whole group along sat around a table with Assurbanipal to design this poster. They cut out photos of the play and pieces of newspaper, and each pasted one part on the poster. The poster is not signed by a designer.
Suddenly
One of the Workshop’s books with a very distinct design is Suddenly. Its cover has a green background recalling Ashura, and the title is handwritten by Soheil Souzani. The endpapers are immature compositions of an Arabic sentence meaning:“He is loved by God, died in the love of God, he is killed by God, died with the Sword of God.” Suddenly is the story of a house with a few families as tenants. It is the day of Ashura. The tenants belong to the lower class, and each of them is notorious for a sort of delinquency. They are suspicious of Fereydoun, the new tenant, and think he has hidden a great wealth in his room. At last, in order to steal his property they bury him alive.
The Cherry Orchard
Apart from the quality of The Cherry Orchard, the historical significance is that the new building of The City Theatre was inaugurated with this poster. The picture used in the poster is a part of a painting by Claude Monet. Four copies of the picture are placed beside each other with different colors poured on them. But, the play’s brochure is more interesting: A folder composed of eight pieces of paper about the writer, director, designer, and a few illustrations. Fereydoun Ave has also designed and executed similar brochures for Caligula, The Little Eyolf and The Man, the Beast and the Virtue directed by Arby Ovanesian.
Professional Graphic Designers
Some of the Workshop’s posters are designed by professional graphic designers. Here, professional implies that graphic design was assumed as the profession through which they earned their living; a fact that does not apply to the members of the Workshop. Ghobad Shiva, Ebrahim Haghighi, Ali Asghar Mohtaj, Behzad Hatam, Fereydoun Ave, Edward Arshamian and Bahram Khaef are the professional designers who have designed posters for the Workshop.
The Atelier of National Iranian Radio and Television
The covers of the Workshop’ books did not have a uniform template, with the exception of a series with Gunny textured background and writings with Titr font designed by Ghobad Shiva. Since the Workshop was affiliated to the National Iranian Radio and Television, a part of its work was carried out in Television’s atelier under the supervision of Shiva. The illustration on the cover of Heramsa was designed in this atelier by Hassan Fouzi Tehrani.
The Hangout belongs to the same series. The cover displays a macho beside a traditional Iranian couch which resembles the environment of Khalaj’s play and is designed by Bijan Saffari. The same picture is used for the poster of How Are You Doing Mash Rahim? play.
A Sad Sonnet
The calligraphy for Union in the Seventh Land: A Sad Sonnet is by Reza Mafi in the Shekasta Nasta’liq style.On the pastedown, the portrait of Abbas Nalbandian is painted by Bijan Saffari. Years later, Nalbandian committed suicide with sedative pills after his release from the prison. This portrait was carved on his tombstone.
Ardeshir Mohassess
Some of the sketches of Ardeshir Mohassess are used in designing the Workshop’s book covers. The reason might be his close friendship with the directors of the Workshop or the same theme of their works. At any rate, the cover of “S. S. M. from Death to Death” cannot be placed in any of the common categories of book design in Iran. Not even can the book be placed in any literary category! His other sketches are used for Three by Peter Handke and If Faust Had Acted a Bit More Gentlemanly by Nalbandian.
The Servant
The Servant, directed by Bijan Mofid, is a play based on folk tales and recalls the traditional ru-howzi Iranian plays. The play director announces the entrance of the Sultan. The Sultan enters the scene, followed by the Vizier. It is the trial of a young rural man who has knocked the Sheriff down in front of the public due to the Sheriff ’s disrespect. A trial is held. As usual, the Vizier is b eheaded instead of the young rural man who is now called the Servant, and the play goes on! This play was designed by Bijan Saffari.
The word design, which is emphasized in the Workshop’s manifesto, includes the set, custom lighting, poster, brochure, and book cover design. The cover of The Servant, which is folded several times, is composed of the characters’ postures. Unfolding each pleat reveals the face and customs of a character.
Others
The work of foreign artists was also used for some of the Workshop’s book covers. It seems that Edvard Munch was the favorite artist, and his works were often selected for the Workshop’s posters and book covers by Arby Ovanesian. The works of Claude Monet, Marc Chagall, Jean-Michel Folon, and others were also used.
The Workshop›s Death
Two months after the revolution, on April 1979, a group of people attacked the Workshop’s building. They imprisoned Nalbandian and his assistant in the Workshop’s basement and transferred him to prison. It was never known what happened to the Workshop’s neatly classified archive of photos, plays, books, and posters — although some say there were piles of torn paper in a nearby street and brooks for a few days.
The Theater Workshop in Iran›s Museum of Graphic Design
On a beautiful snowy day last winter, Iran’s Museum of Graphic Design was inaugurated in Arbab Hormoz edifice, located in Bagh Anari, Tehran (the Pars district in the East of Tehran). Some of theTheatre Workshop posters are included in the Museum’s collection. Although the pioneers of Iranian graphic design are often disregarded for their experimental, alternative tendencies, the Museum of Graphic Design committee of the Iranian Graphic Design Society (IGDS) has collected and conserved a good collection of these posters during recent years.
Some of the Theatre Workshop posters that are registered in the Museum of Graphic Design include Let’s Put a Chair (No. P698), Suddenly (No. DP549), The Chant and Two Executioners (No. P622), Immediately (No. DP249), The Cherry Orchard (No. DP1015), The Same as We Were (No. P657), The Servant (No. P685), The Pearl (No. DP1009), and Loot (No. P667).