Upcoming Show: Bahram Beizaei's Four Boxes

ABOUT FOUR BOXES:

Among several gifted Iranian playwrights, Bahram Beyzaie is the one who is the most attached to native tradition.His inspiration comes from Persian folklore and Persian life, and his models from Persian traditional theater.Four Boxes was written during the time when significant social, political, and economic changes were taking place in Iran, which ultimately led to the Islamic Revolution of 1979.In Beyzaie’s Four Boxes, the characters are presented symbolically as four colors and a scarecrow.At the beginning, in order to safeguard the interests of his own class, each contributes to the making of a scarecrow as guardian against some unknown internal and external threat. Soon, however, the scarecrow comes to life and is able to break their alliance and force them to build four boxes, in which each is confined. This confinement is, however, self-imposed, for each character is more afraid of the others than of the despotic scarecrow.

The colors in this play are modeled after a number of characters in traditional Persian Ru Howzi.Yellow, Green, Red and Black also represent various factions in the society, the intellectual, the clergy, the merchant and the laborer, respectively.Scarecrow is an updated model of evil spirit in those traditional plays.This creature is legendary demon or devil from Persian mythology. In this play Beyzaie succeeds in presenting universal philosophical ideas in fully dramatic terms. His language is poetic, in both formal and colloquial Persian; in the latter he achieves this effect by means of rapid rhythmic exchanges among characters. In Four Boxes there is no issue of gender, ethnicity, or race and the overall idea is not related to a specific sex, race, or ethnic group. That is why the characters are also named by colors. While the original concept of Four Boxes was expressed by an Iranian dramatist, the play addresses common themes from all cultures and parts of the world that make up the human experience.