Her first work was Isabel-Isabel. She did collaborate with Ali Asghar Dashti to create Pinocchio. Their last work together is Mohsen. Ahmadpour has also tried her luck in cinema. She co-wrote the script for Rush directed by Shahram Makri. She tells us more in the following:
Before doing anything on stage, what did you read the most?
I used to read a lot as a kid. I learned that from my parents. I used to read everything, from children books to Shakespeare, Rajab Ali Etemadi and Fahimeh Rahimi. It is hard to find your way through all these different books. Still, I found something in common in all of them: Literature and Story. In high school, I became a professional reader, studying professional books.
We are yet to teach creative writing in schools and universities. This has become a trend in other parts of the world. We depend a lot on information, but what about creativity in writing?
It is wrong for those who design our curriculum not to recognize that story writing is a professional career.
When did you seriously begin writing your first piece?
I always wanted to write. In the final year of university, I came to know Pegah Tabasi-Nejad. She was supposed to write the play Isabel-Isabel as her term paper. Once I went to their rehearsals and liked what I saw. The stage design was interesting and actors were performing well. But the play was not coherent. We discussed the matter for some time and came up with new ideas for it. I added some texts and deleted some scenes. The end result was to our liking. I used to work a lot that time - something I don’t today.
After Isabel-Isabel, Dashti asked you to work on the Dramaturgy of his play Pinocchio?
Isabel-Isabel was not that hard. But Pinocchio was a much more complex work. Audiences expected a lot from him after his success in Don Quixote. I wanted to change the entire piece or the form in Pinocchio. I wanted to go somewhere completely new in this fictional character and the protagonist of the children's novel - The Adventures of Pinocchio (1883) by Italian writer Carlo Collodi. Pinocchio is a cultural icon. As one of the most reimagined characters in children's literature, his story has been adapted into other media. So we had to have something new to talk about it. I wanted to retell the story from a new perspective. You either tell the story as it is or change it completely. I didn’t want to go for the first option.
I changed the details. It was a new adventure for me. I kept the concept of the story and added painting, literature, music, poetry, cinema and philosophy to it. We did rehearsals for eight months until we could come up with a brand new Pinocchio story for audiences. It was no longer the original Pinocchio but had all the details to it. After watching the play, one critic said: Neither This nor That, Both This and That. I still think this was my best work. I find some parts of it still exciting after all these years.
Did you actually realize at that time that you were actually doing Dramaturgy on Pinocchio?
I used everything and anything for this piece, form dialogue to explaining a scene or details of lighting and stage design. Dramaturgy may also be defined, more broadly, as shaping a story into a form that may be acted. I gave the work and the performance a structure, an understructure as well as a reference to the original story. I used Dramaturgy as a tool to scrutinize the narrative, cross-cultural signs and references, theater and film historic sources, genre, ideological approach, even represented new roles of the narrative-performative work. This all looked strange even to us during the whole process. I sometimes even acted as director as this was part of the whole idea of Dramaturgy. In a sense, there was no difference between me and the director.
After this play did you get any other job offers as Dramaturgist?
No. The play came as a shock to many. Not many liked it. I was a new stranger with a strange job in town and no one wanted to hire me. I was out of the ordinary. Things changed after the play Molla Nasreddin. I received many new job offers. Guess what? I had to turn down many.
You worked on a play called Tal/Zahak with a Switzerland theater group. It never went on stage in Iran. What happened?
It went on stage during the Fajr Theater Festival and after that in Switzerland. Both groups had their own writers and performers. I did the Dramaturgy of the play for the Iranian team. We did some rehearsals in Tehran for a month to get to know each other. It was a superb experience. After that we rehearsed in Switzerland with Mass ‘n Fiber. Cultural interaction with others is interesting. It was a superb experience for all of us.
What about cinema? Are you planning to have a hands-on experience there too?
It’s not bad to work in another medium as well. If I can turn the clock I will certainly take different courses in university as well. You don’t have to work in theater alone. You can do both and still succeed. Art cannot be confined to just one field. I still get new proposals but pick just a few. I’m now writing a screenplay for a foreign filmmaker which is in the post-production stage. I like to do theater, cinema and literature in different stages. It helps acquaint yourself with different art forms and materials. I like it this continuous rebellion that they call Dramaturgy.