Assurbanipal Babilla was born in Tehran, Iran in 1944. Bani, as he was known to family and friends, grew up in an Assyrian-Presbyterian household in Tehran. He attended college at the American University and the Near Eastern School of Theology, both in Beirut. Babilla gained his first theatrical experiences in experimental workshops in Beirut. Upon the outbreak of civil wars in Lebanon, he returned to Iran and started to write and direct plays including The Maids by Jean Genet.
Bani’s belief in liberation theology led to his excommunication from the Assyrian-Presbyterian church, after which he dedicated himself to professional activities in theatrical arts. Subsequently, he joined the famed Drama Workshop (Kargahe Namayesh) of Tehran in 1973 and formed one of the four acting ensembles of this workshop known as Ahreman. The members of Ahreman included, among others, Sohreh Āghdāshloo, Esmāeel Pour Rezā, Parviz Pour Hosseini, Mahmood Sehhati, Mitrā Ghamsari, Mahvash Afshārpanāh and Shāhrokh Ghiyāsi. Before the Islamic Revolution in Iran, Ahreman staged fourteen plays at Drama Workshop, City Theater and the Shiraz Art Festival. During these years, Bani held painting and photo exhibitions in the Iran-America Society, Sorayā Gallery, City Gallery, and Litho Gallery in Tehran.
The Drama Workshop was closed down after the Islamic Revolution in 1979, and Bani immigrated to the US where he taught theater and directing at the University of Southern California, New York University’s Experimental Theater Wing, and Bard College, for ten years. Upon his arrival in the US, Bani began to write and direct plays, and by 2006 he had staged twenty-one plays (mainly in New York), and had directed five plays by Shirin Neshāt, Kukio Mishima and Bertlot Brecht. He also wrote four plays that were never staged. In 1988, he founded the theater troupe Purgatorio Ink with Leylā Ebtehādj and Donna Linderman, and led the company in a series of critically acclaimed avant-garde experimental theater performances through the 1990s. In 2005, he was the recipient of a Hellman-Hammet grant, which supports writers who have been immigrants or refugees as a result of political persecution. Bani died on March 31, 2011 at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City at the age of 67 due to respiratory failure following six years of serious illness.
Act I: The Saint Among the Cursed
After Bani returned to Iran and staged his first play, he was excommunicated from the Assyrian-Presbyterian church, but the influence of religious imagery never left him. In his paintings, set designs and posters, one can easily trace the influence of Christian symbols and iconographies. Examples of such imagery are the cruciate structures in posters designed for Charkh o Falak (La Ronde) by Arthur Schnitzler, The Stronger (Qavitar) by August Strindberg and The Lady Aoi (Banooy-i Mimirad) by Yukio Mishima and in the set design of his own play Emshab Shabe Mahtābe (Tonight There’s Moonlight). Reference to religious and local iconography is clearly present in the posters designed for Qātel Ziyād Harf Mizanad (The Murderer Talks Too Much), Aroosak-hā (The Dolls) and Sandoq (The Box). This last one was designed by Fereydoun Ave for the Drama Workshop, and here we see Bani’s face on the body of a saint with a halo, in the position of an omniscient. Similar structures are found in his later works—on posters, statues and especially in his designs on shoe boxes.
Act II: Politics, Religion, Sex
Bani’s works are caustic, sarcastic, satirical and candid about politics, religion and sex. He unsheathed his sword at common moral restraints and social norms. He was not anti-moral, but he marched on social norms and values and urged his audience to reconsider the reality of these values. His works were the product of a very sensitive, serious and iconoclastic mind. They are postmodern, multiethnic, intercultural, intertextual, polysexual and multidimensional.
Act III: The Garden of Earthly Delights
A visual manifestation of one of Bani’s multi-layered works is seen in Akhar-e Zamān (The End of Time)’s poster, designed by Fereydoun Ave. The design of this poster is a collage of the famous painting “The Garden of Earthly Delights” by Hieronymus Bosch, Armenian religious miniatures, Chinese portraits and pictures of superstars. The play is a combination of writings by Samuel Beckett, Yukio Mishima, Sādegh Hedāyat, François Villon, Jorge Luis Borges, Forouq Farrokhzād, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Assurbanipal Babilla.
Act IV: The Murderer Talks Too Much
In Ahreman, Bani developed his skills as a writer, translator, director, set designer, choreographer and poster designer for his plays. Throughout all production stages of his work, he epitomized the two principles of experimentalism and originality of artwork. This is completely obvious in the posters that Bani designed for Ahreman. While reviewing his posters, one sees that he has a completely different style, method of performance, and mode of expression—each time he comes up with another novel experiment. It is this experimental spirit that has led to the creation of posters such as The Murderer Talks Too Much and The Lady Aoi, both considered unrivalled in Iran’s history of graphic design.
Act V: Death of the Wolf, Cain’s Sign
In spite of Bani’s efforts to maintain the experimental nature and originality in his work, the impact of global contemporary design trends is traceable in some of his posters. One of his most acclaimed posters is for the play Marg-e Gorg va Neshān-e Ghābil (Death of the Wolf and Cain’s Sign), thought to be influenced by the design and coloring methods of Push Pin Studios, Heinz Edleman, and Jean Michel Folon—as well as by mainstream Iranian graphic designers such as Farshid Mesqāli and Qobād Shiva.
Act VI: Write by Hand
One can identify the posters that are completely designed and executed by Bani from his writing. In the posters designed for La Ronde, Death of the Wolf and Cain’s Sign, and Yakhbandān (Ice Age), texts and pictures are designed by hand to comprise a unified and comprehensive whole. This feature is considered distinctive in comparison with other posters of the period.
Act VII: End of Ahreman According to Fereydoun Ave
In the final years of his life, Bani waited tables at a café in Greenwich Village, NYC—the biggest and craziest city in the world. He had fallen in love with his job. Every day he talked to the farraginous flock of his customers for hours, and filled his sketchbook with words, designs, pictures, poems, plays, ideas and fantasies. He was at home in the city of the homeless. He was happy, a moving bomb, endlessly dangerous to be with. May his soul rest in felicity.
References:
- A look at the activities of Ahreman acting ensemble, Masoud Najafi Ardebili’s weblog (in Farsi).
- Vaqār ke Chon Farhang Marmuz Ast (Dignity, Which Is Mysterious as Culture), Assurbanipal Babilla, Rastākhiz Newspaper, January 18, 1978.
- Enjil-e Namāyeshi-e Banipal (Banipal’s Theatrical Bible), 11th Shiraz Art Festival’s Newsletter, No.10, Aug 26, 1977, P8.
In Masih-e Sharqi (This Eastern Messiah), 11th Shiraz Art Festival’s Newsletter, No.10, Aug 26, 1977, P9.
- Emshab Shab-e Mahtāb-e (Tonight There’s Moonlight) in Seven Moves and One Prologue, 9th Shiraz Art Festival’s book, 1975, P27.
- Sā’at-e Sheshom (The Sixth Hour), 11th Shiraz Art Festival’s book, 1977, P102.
- Kārgāh-e Namāyesh; Az Āqāz tā Pāyān (Drama Workshop; From Beginning to the End), Setāre Khorramzādeh Esfahāni, Farāz Publications, 2008.
- Kārgāh-e Namāyesh, Hamidrezā Reyshahri, Nowruz-e Honar Publications, 2007.
- Assurbanipal, Sarkesh va Taboo-shekan dar Arse-ye Honar-e Iran (Assurpanipal, Recalcitrant and Iconoclastic in the Arena of Iran’s Arts) Amir-Mosaddeq Kātooziān in an interview with Mitrā Ghamsari, Sorayā Shāyesteh, Nikzād Nojoomi, Hādi Hazāvei, Apr 10, 2011.
- “Suddenly Something Recklessly Gay”, A Two-Day Event Celebrating the Work Of Iranian Theater and Visual Artist Assurbanipal Babilla, The Iranian Studies Initiative at New York University, February 17 & 18, 2012.