(bright instrumental music) (people conversing off-mic) - [Narrator] Welcome everyone to the Penny Stamps (bright instrumental music) (audience applaudi - Welcome to the Penny Stamps Distinguished Speaker Series.

My name's Chrisstina Hamilton, the series director.

And today great treat in store, British-Iranian theatermaker Javaad Alipoor and Iranian musician, writer, actor, and podcast host King Raam.

A big thank you to our partners as we co-present today with the University Musical Society or UMS, who's been and continues to be an extraordinary partner to the series.

And we have additional support today from the Arts and Resistance LSA Theme Semester, the U-M Arts Initiative.

And of course our series partners, Detroit Public Televisio This is just the beginning of our guest's visit to Ann Arbor as next week UMS will present a series of performances of Javaad Alipoor's new show featuring King Raam, "Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World".

UMS offers five performances next week.

So get your tickets at ums.org.

And for all the students in the house, remember you get student pricing st at just 12 bucks a ticket.

So go and get them.

Please do rememb and take a break from technology while you're here.

Due to time constraints today and the amount of material that we ha we will not have time for a Q&A.

However, there will be a Q&A offered with the artists after the show opening night.

So more incentive to get your ti Today's program is gonna begin with each of the artists taking a solo moment on stage.

(audience member cheering) Yeah, and then this is gonna b with a conversation.

And to lead that conversation, Ne da Ulaby who reports on arts and entertainment and cultural trends for NPR's Art Desk.

And many of you here in the Penny Stamp S She's been here on the Penny Stamp stage before and she's actually, we figured out, the only second time interviewer in the Penny Stamps' his But first, for a proper introduc and more info on their upcoming show, please welcome president of the University Musical Soc Matthew VanBesien.

(audience applauding) - Hey, thank you so much.

Welcome ever It's great to have you here.

I'm Matt I wanna thank Chrisstina and everyone at the Penny Al l of our partners here at U of M Chrisstina mentioned the U of M Arts Initiative.

We're really proud to be in partnership with all of these wonderful fo We're excited to have these special artist And of course as Chrisstina said next week presenting, "Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World."

This will actually be UM's second opportunity to present Javaad Alipoor and now the Javaad Alipoor company.

We presented a first work in a trilogy of which "Things Hidden" is the final installment ba It was called "The Believers Are But Brothers."

I'm gonna of course defer and let from Javaad himself about "Things Hidden."

But we're really excited to bring this work.

It's the only place that's happening here in the US on this It was at the Edinburgh Festival just this past Au And back in the UK in the spring and really was met with incredible critical reviews.

And Javaad Alipoor is a great example of an artist and a company with whom we have a relationship because of the work of our incredible tea And I wanna give a shout out to Mary Roeder on our team.

She is our associate director of programming.

She is our secret weapon at UMS for finding incredible artists and great theater work really all over the world.

And she really built t and his company from the very beginning.

And so we're appreciative to and I have a feeling you might he a little bit more this evening.

So let me just now introduce our artist.

Let me just tell you a little bit about So Javaad Alipoor is an artist, an d the artistic director of the Javaad Alipoor company.

He's a former ACE Change Maker and was resident associate director at the Sheffield's theaters for th And before that was associate director at theater in The Mill in the UK from 2015 to 2017.

He was also a founding member of the International Alliance in Support of Ir the Syria Solidarity Campaign, and the Bradford based pro-EU migrant o Bradford Says Everyone Stays.

Javaad's writing about international politics, cultural policy.

His art has The Independent, and The Stage.

His plays are also published by Oberon and his poetry by Art in Unusual Places.

And he's also the special VIP for Dishoom.

King Raam, who's also joining us today, started his musical career in the undergrounds of Tehran with a great deal of international press behind his band, including features in the New York Times, MTV, Billboard, NPR, CNN, Vice, and Vanity Fair.

Raam paved the way for a new generation of aspiring underground Iranian artists.

Besides his live shows with the band, Raam has also channeled his creative energ into one man storytelling performance called Depar About his family's experience of detainment and his father's murder by the state woven together with his music.

He also has a podcast in Persian ca which translates to the Drunken Truth.

Since its inception in 2020, the show has had over 40 million stre We are so thrilled to welcome these artists here today.

Please welcome to the stage Javaad Alipoor.

(audience applauding) - Hello everyone and thanks for that very kind introduction.

My name is Javaad Alipoor.

As Matthew was saying, I'm an art a director, a performer sometimes.

And I'm artistic director of the Javaad Ali which I would be the first to admit is perhaps not the most imaginative name anyone's ever given a theater company.

But in any case, we make a certain kind of work.

It's not necessarily limited by genre or by content.

But at the heart of it is a manifesto that me and my collaborators worked on together that lays out what drives what we try and do.

And so I wanted to share that with you this afternoon.

If you're interested, it's on our website at ja If you just click on the manifesto button.

So I'm gonna read that and just talk it through with you very brie So it's set out in points.

And the first point says, every work we make should sa directly about contemporary politics.

We believe that the most important political issues at this moment are the global gap between the rich and the poor.

The assaults on democracy in cluding the rise of the far right, the ongoing climate emergency.

And the rights of migrants, refugees, and All of these are fundamentally about the relationship of people to real or imaginary space and that's what theater is.

Artistically every project should speak formally to the questions we are asking.

So the work we make is not just limited to things that happen on stage.

The relationships between people and the things we build are So me work will meet its final products as somethin but the collective thought, research, and activity that goes into it is just as crucial.

Internationalist art such as we try and make is by its nature anti-Eurocentric, anti-racist, and what I would call consciously post-colonial.

When I use the word post-colonial, I'm trying to call to mind a school of sociology, of art criticism, and philosophy that comes largely from India and Nigeria from the 1970s onwards.

We think this because aside from the violence, the death, and misery, the unconscious wages of empire, racism, Eurocentrism make us stupid and boring.

But the answer to this for us can't only be in representation as our work isn't only about what happens on stage.

So our responses need to be different to just about who's on stage or perhaps telling new stories or diversity in that sense.

To explain what I'm driving at, I'm gonna show you a couple of pi So the first one I would've thought you'd recognize.

(bright instrumental music) (sharp rhythmic guitar music) (bright instrumental music) (sharp rhythmic guitar music) # Now the King told the boogie man # # You have to let that raga drop # # The oil down the desert way # # Has been shaking to the top # # The Sheik, he drove his Cadillac # # He went a-cruising down the ville # # The muezzin was a-standing # # On the radiator grille # # Sharif don't like it # # Rocking the Casbah # # Rock the Casbah # # Sharif don't like it # # Rocking the Casbah # # Rock the Casbah # # By order of the Prophet # So just quick show of hands, how many people know that song?

- The Clash.

- Exactly, The Clash.

A lot of peopl So that's Rock Did the Clash get a round of applause?

Is that what's happening?

Yes, let Obviously, a iconic sort of funky punk song, which is playing with a whole bunch of like old fashioned stereotypes about what the Middle Ea So that was covered by an amazing French Algerian artist.

So obviously you folks will be aware about of the history.

Algeria was a French colony.

So there are a bunch o who live in France and there's an amazing music scene that grew out of that.

That kin on a kind of Algerian Bu t then in France gets mixed with like punk and hip hop and all this kind of stuff.

And a brilliant artist called Rachid T And that sounds a little bit like this.

(airy passionate melodic flute music) (airy passionate melodic flute music) (rhythmic drum music) (mystical mystery music) (upbeat drumming music) (sharp rhythmic guitar music) (Rachid singing in Algerian Arabic) (bittersweet guitar) (upbeat drumming music (Rachid singing in Algerian Arabic) (upbeat drumming music) # Sharif don't like it # # Rock the Casbah # # Rock the Casbah # # Sharif don't like it # # Rock the Casbah # # Rock the Casbah # (Rachid singing in Algerian Arabic) (bittersweet drumming music) (Rachid singing in Algerian Arabic) (upbeat drumming music) (Rachid singing in Algerian Arabic) # Sharif don't like it # # Rock the Casbah # # Rock the Casbah # # Sharif don't like it # # Rock the Casbah # # Rock the Casbah # (rhythmic mystical mystery music) It's brilliant, isn't it?

Absolutely brilliant.

Ra chid died tragically young a couple of ye But what I found really amazing about that and what I think illustrates a point I'm trying to make about the kind of to make as a company.

There are conversations that are happening around the world now about cultural appropriation and stuff like that.

What I love about that song is that it's kin of being slippery through all of that.

So he's taking a song that's great but deals in and flipping that around and someone else owning it.

And the thing that really is best about that for me is, there's a famous story about Rachid that when that song first became a hit in France critics would ask him about covering an older British song.

He would make up a story, but I think it's made up.

He would make up a story and he would 'Cause he would say that when he was 12, 'cause he was much younger than The Clash.

He said he was d and The Clash happened to be there.

And he told them that they sh a song called Rock the Casbah, because 30 years later he which really captures something for me.

Point four of our manifesto is that every one of our projects will think specifically about what kinds of people are missing from the c and bring them in as audiences, participants, and artists.

We don't make work for audiences, we wanna make work for interlocutors.

We want to be talking to the world.

For worse, traditional arts organizations speak to a specific suburban white, upper middle class organization.

And actually tune them and train them into being ve Point number five, every project we make will have international collaboration at its heart.

And that's because we don't think politics or political art is limited to what used to be called the state of the nation play.

We want to make state of the world work.

And that isn't limited to the internationalism that you could describe as internationalism f of flying people around the globe.

But it can be about the everyday internati that's represented by migrant communities or the way digital technology works.

Or any kind of metropolitan town or ci Point number six.

Every project should co of a new arts infrastructure in some way.

To make work that sits between genres and is formally adventurous.

Or that seeks a participator beyond the traditional demands a new kind of infrastructure.

So every one of our projects will think explicitly about how it does this and how it can be shared with other artists.

Point number seven, every project we make needs to speak to history and find something new about how we got where we are.

And that's fairly self-explanatory.

Point number eight, every project needs to have some pervasive, participatory, or interactive element.

The political realities we face are ones th or unconsciously as a species we've built.

We're inviting people to play with these realities.

So we need to give them something to play with.

This is what we call punk rock immersion or punk rock pervasiveness.

So it's not an interactivity that com necessarily out of some new technology.

But rather one that transforms how we see our complicity with the world as it is and our power to remake it.

And probably the most important point, the very last one is point 9, which says simply things have to be fun.

Things can be hard, complex, and difficult.

They don't need to be simple.

But they need to be playful and fu When they're not we'll give up what we're doing now and become lawyers, or teachers, or politicians.

Thank you.

I'll leave you in the hand (audience applauding) (audience applauding and cheering) - Good evening ladies and gentlemen.

I am Raam, thank you Th is song is called Waking From a Dream.

(beautiful heartfelt melodic guitar music) (beautiful heartfelt melodic guitar music) (Raam singing in Persian) # ### ####### ## ###### ## ## # ### #### ###### # ### ### #### # # ## #### # ##### ### ### ####### # # #### ## ##### ###### ### ##### ## ### #### # # ### ####### #### ## ## ## ## ## ### #### # # ### ####### #### ## ## ### ## #### #### # (beautiful heartfelt melodic guitar music) (beautiful heartfelt melodic guitar music) # #### #### ## # # # ## ##### ###### # # ## ## ## ### #### ### ## ### #### ####### # # #### ## #### #### ### # # ### ## ## ## #### ## ## # # ## #### # ####### ### # # ### #### ### ## ### # (tender bittersweet guitar music) # #### ##### ### # # #### ## ## ## # # ## #### ####### ### ###### #### ## ## # # ## #### # ## ### # #### ####### #### # # #### ## ##### ##### #### ## ### ## #### # (beautiful heartfelt melodic guitar music) (beautiful heartfelt melodic guitar music) # #### ## #### #### ### # # ### ## ## ## #### ## ## # # ## #### # ####### ### # # ### #### ### ## ### # # ## #### # ####### ### # # ### #### ### ## ### # # ### ## ### # # It is between us # # ### ## ### # # It is between us # (tender bittersweet guitar music) # #### ## #### #### ### # # ### #### ###### # ### ### #### # # ## #### # ##### ### ### ####### # # #### ## ##### ###### ### ##### ## ### #### # # #### ## #### #### ### # # ### #### ###### # ### ### #### # # ### ####### #### ## ## ## ## ## ### #### # (romantic guitar music) # ### ## ### # # It is between us # (audience applauding) (audience applauding) (audience applauding) - Hi, I'm Neda Ulaby.

It's such a and with you and with you.

And as a very, very selfish interlocutor, I'd like to start if I may by asking some questions that will just let us get to know you better.

Raam, if I may, I'd like to ask you to tell me about Javaad.

What about him in the context of your collaboration makes him interest - Well, we owe it to Mary.

She's some She's the one who introduced us.

I was in my one man storytelling performance Departure about the story of my dad and everything that And I don't know how I got in touch with Mary or how she connected us together.

But she's like, "Oh yeah, there' British-Iranian guy, you should And I'm like, "Sure, I love alcohol, so why not?"

(audience chuckling) So somehow and we just, you know, one pint, two pints, three.

It just kept going.

And we just kept talking ab and our stories.

And someti and you immediately click with them.

And you're like, " And people usually say that i a lot of times it doesn't end up anything.

But we fortunately did end up worki and I'm really happy that I got the opportunity.

Because Javaad is like waling Wikipedia.

There's so much information in his brain and it's just so much to process.

You never get bored when you're arou And everything that he had done before with his other project as well, I went and looked them up.

And it was j First of all, I was su most other Iranian arti But I hadn't heard his name so much.

He kept in the shadows of Bradford up there in the north in the UK.

But it was really cool when once we got to know one another and started collaborating and working.

And one thing I always really love abou it's like every conversation he's like, "That could be a show."

An d so maybe our next project might be a Persian sort of fight of the concords musical political historical drama.

I don't know, we always have these crazy ideas.

But yeah, that's the gist of - So to be clear, Penny Stamps brought you together?

- I guess so.

- Kind of, yeah.

Certainly Mary Roeder did, yeah, that's righ No, absolutely, absolutely.

- And Javaad, what should we know about King Raam?

- Well, when Mary introduced us, I really hit it off discussing with Raam some of the ideas about this project that I wanted to do.

And there was lots of oblique ways in which we were both interested in that.

But one of the things that you should kn that Raam is a really important part of a certain wave of Iranian popular music.

So there was a period after the revolution during the war with Iraq and so on, where most Iranian pop music and culture was actually being manufactured in Los Angeles by the diaspora.

So the Iranian joke about Los Angeles is, there's so many Iranians, we call it Terror Angeles.

And people who'd escaped were making record and sending them back into Iran illegally.

But actually there's this younger generation who then come up in like, I'm gonna say what?

The 1900s and 2000s where two bi in Iranian popular music.

There's the development of a ki what I think Ram's kind of music is so you can, you can fight me later.

But a kind of new wave kind you know what I mean by new wave, right?

A kind of new wave sort of, in die rock scene and a hip hop scene.

And a couple of the bands that Raam was in were quite a big important part of that for Ira At points when Raam is in Iran, he won't like me saying this, but kind of a bit of a rock star t And so because I speak Persian, I'm engaged with that culture.

So I knew one of Raam's records, it's one of my favorite sort of contemporary Iranian records befo The podcast that Matthew spoke about is quite an important podcast in terms of not just the diaspora Iranians, But actually the 80 million people, the younger ones of them who live there.

So Raam's podcast does a lot of work about some conversations that perhaps aren't always that open in a culture which is moving forwar and doing different things and developing all the time.

But nevertheless, like a lot of the world is still more, let's say, traditional and patriarchal in the direct sense of the word than perhaps most of this country or Europe is.

So it's a place where people have certain kinds of conversations around mental health, sex addiction issues, politics that happens in a way that doesn't really happen anywhere else.

- Raam you alluded to what happened to your father.

It's a terrible, terrible question to ask.

He sounds like an extraordinary man.

Will you tell us about who your father - Yeah, so my father was a political scientist, a professor, environmentalist.

And he actually got his PhD at University of Orego and that's where I grew up in the 1800s.

But he loved his country so much, he wanted to go ba and contribute in any way he could, whether it was through teaching.

He taught in Iran, he taught in Afghanistan, and he started an NGO to protect the Asiatic cheetahs.

And so most of his life was in servitude toward his country.

And if someone asked me when I was a kid one day like, how do you think your father will die in this world?

The last thing I ever thought would be in like that would've been the last option.

Because he was such a humble, simple humanitaria who enjoyed the very simple things in life, just being in nature, hiking and in the outdoors.

So when the government raided our home, the IRGC, the Revolutionary Guards under the pretext of espionage.

Because in Iran, whoever they don't like, they can easily cast them into this wor this shadow realm of this umbrella of espionage.

"If you don't agree with us, if you don't say what we want you to say, therefore you're a spy."

And they'll fabricate in order to fit the narrative that they have.

And even when they, my father was arrested, I was in New York at the time.

I'm like, "My dad knows a lot of people," like they're gonna let him Nothing's gonna happen.

They've never done anything and everything And when I got the phone call like two weeks later, that, "Raam, are you sitting down?"

As soon as I heard those words, I knew what had happened It was just such a shock 'cause he was such a g Our parents are our first idols and it was such a huge shock.

And it then it turned into this whole huge inte political sort of mess where it was just me and my brother against this multi-billion dollar propaganda machine of the Islamic Republic trying to discredit my father and his name and his reputation.

And we didn't have anyt except being able to talk to journalists, New York Times, CNN, and whatever to battle that propaganda.

And at the same time we went back home to bring my mother out.

And mind you, they're following us everywhere They're thugs, they constantly raid the home.

They're threatening us and literally use th "Be careful not to get suicided," to me.

Because they claim that my father had committed suicide in prison without ever providing any evidence.

And the only thing that they allowed me to see was like a footage of him in this solitary tiny confinement of a space where he was just walking around depressed and alone.

And I didn't want my brother and my mom to see that footage.

I'm like, we don't all need to be traumatized by this.

And people don't realize, like nobody wants to see the last mom of a loved one captured on film.

So obviously it's a very traumatic event.

And we decided to leave because we didn't feel safe over th And at the airport, while we got to the airport, we were just joking around.

I'm sure many of you an d Ben Affleck and the saving of the... - [Neda] Building a fake movie.

- Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Were they saving US They were saving the US I think, I can't - I don't remember, I can't remember.

- But anyway and joking about how at like what if they come and capture us at the airport?

(Raam stuttering) There's no way that this is gonna happen.

And as we were about to board they called for my mother and her name.

And they came and grabbed her an "The kids can get on the plane but she's not allowed to leave the country."

And we begged our mother to stay.

We're like, "We're not leaving without you."

And it became this whole huge scene.

And my mother, her last words "I just want you to be safe.

That's all that I want in this An d that was the hardest moment of my to having to leave my mother back there and to move.

And the Revolutionary Guard even wanted to keep our dogs.

We have three dogs with us and they wouldn't But then Lufthansa got involved and like, "They're alr You can't do a That's how messed up I think sometimes people don't realize the amount of violence that certain, fanatical elements in these countries are able to, these atrocities that they can commit so easily.

They're monsters.

They're not When I was looking in I remember one of them was just going through his phone showing 'cause they had an autopsy without our permission.

We didn't have like an to figure out what happened.

As he was scrolling th of all my father's organs, as if he was just like showing me photos from like a holiday trip or some There was no humanity in these peop And it took us almost two years to finally get my mom with a bunch of help from the international community.

And, sorry, it became a long-winded answer.

I'm sorry about that.

It's jus But yeah, in the last couple of I' ve been trying to use my work, my music, and theater, and podcasting as a way to put out my creativity to be able to deal with all the trauma.

And my brother has turned into psy That's what he's become, a psychedelic ther Everybody deals with it in their own way.

My mom takes the dogs ou but it is what it is.

And I'm just happy that I'm still here.

And I know my dad would want me to keep going on and being happy and leaving the same type of positive impact that he did on the planet.

So if I can do a littl I know he'll be happy and proud.

(audience applauding) - One of the things that so impressed me when I was learning about your father was that he purposeful to teach at the most conservative and religious university in Iran, even though he himself was quite secular and left wing.

And he sounds like such an incredibly gentle, humble man.

But for him to have made a choice like that, deciding that he was going to see who would join the elite who would not be exposed to another point of view strikes me as an extraordinaril And you seem to have come by your punk rock genes.

- [Raam] In the belly of the beast.

Just if I could add this, I think his idea in the West and the way that everything is becoming so polarized into zeros and ones.

You're either on this side or that s and we're forgetting t I think for him it's always about dialogue.

We see all these wars on Twitter, people fighting with each other.

But does anyone's mind really ever change?

You can't change someo by being disrespectful.

You have to have a positive conversati and dialogue in order to improve.

And find a peaceful resolution to these bigger issues that - I'm asking Raam about these extraordinarily tragic circumstances in his life because they do play an important part in the piece of theater that hopefully all of you are going to go and see next week.

I've only seen a videotape of it and it's absolutely brilliant.

We're in this kind of awkward position where most of us haven't seen it.

You're going to do it next week, we're here to talk about i Would you tell us about th e Foundation of the World" before we see the traile if you don't mind?

- Yeah, of Should I go for that So "Things Hidden Sinc as a writer I do love a long title, this is true.

Eagle-eyed people in the audience will notice that it's quite a famous quotation from the Bible.

And it's also the name of a book by Rene Girard, which is about a theory of where political violence comes from.

Basically, at the heart of the show is kind of a murder mystery podcast.

Do we have any murder mystery podcast fans in, do people listen to, yeah, cool.

So it's based on the true story of the murder of a very famous Iranian pop star called Fereydoun Farrokhzad.

And Farrokhzad was huge.

I call him Iran's Tom Jones, if t So kind of 1700s, sexy, iconic, everyone loves him regardless of what their political or moral views are.

Farrokhzad in Tehran couldn't walk down the street without being mobbed, he was that level of star.

The revolution happens, he and he finds himself living in Germany in a small flat above a greengrocers.

He leaves for probably a couple of different reasons, he's secretly gay.

So that's prob And another part of it is that he's that very rare t a liberal in the Middle East.

And there's all kinds of Marxists and Islamists and kind of monarchists, but not so many of the liberals.

And he goes from being this guy who literally can't wa without being mobbed to being a guy who works in a greengrocers in Ge But he still carries on making music.

And in 1990, a commercial producer the Royal Albert Hall in London for two nights.

And he sells it out for two nights because Tom Jones is on stage for the first time in 10 years.

So Iranians fly from all over t including people who are part of this new regime.

'Cause at the end of the day, it's Tom Jones.

And about six months later, he's found dead in his apartment in Germany, murdered incredibly brutally.

Stabbed dozens of times, according to some reports and his genitals cut off.

The German police never solved the case.

Now the smart money says it was the Iranian regime who killed him.

And actually, insofar as that's true, that story that I'm telling you isn't about a historical moment.

It's about the beginning of something.

Because since then regimes like Iran, not just Iran, but Iran, Zimbabwe, Pakistan, China, Nigeria, a bunch of places have kind of made it clear that they are willing and able to target dissidents even when they seek sanctuary and asylum in the United States, Canada, Europe, or Australia.

So for instance, I'm sure friends will have heard about the Uyghur journalists who live literally in the wh o get text messages in Chinese languages saying, "Now, just you be aware that we know where you are."

There were two Pakistani journalists found dead in very mysterious circumstances in Canada a couple of years ago.

And there are a number of, obviously, there was the famous case of Jamal Khashoggi, the Saudi journalist.

And there are a number of jo urnalists, and so on in the United States right now who are living under ve and how do you say?

Realistic threat of their life.

And I suppose without trying to sound too polit there would be a view amongst certain of the men.

And they are largely men who run those dictatorships or the kind of countries I mentioned.

There would be a view that says, "Well, after all, we launder our money in cities like New York and London and Pari So there's probably other things we with doing there as well, hey?"

And so the show is kind of about Fereydoun It's kind of a sendup of murder mystery podcast and the internet culture around that kind of mystery.

It's kind of about the politics of the way those dictatorships relate to the And I'm gonna leave this here, but it's kind of about why I ha that he's like Iran's Tom Jones in English, rather than telling you in Persian that Tom Jones is like England's Fereydoun - Shall we watch the trailer?

- Yeah, thank you.

(audience applauding) So I'm just playing this video now.

(Asheghaneh by Fereydoun Farrokhzad) (beautiful booming hypothes # Babi Baba Boom Ba # # Babi Baba Boom Ba # # Babi Baba Boom Ba # # Boom Baba Boom Ba # # Babi Baba Boom Ba # # Babi Baba Boom Ba # # Ba ba Boom Baba Boom Ba # # Babi Baba Boom Ba # # Babi Baba Boom Ba # (Fereydoun singing in Persian passionately) (beautiful booming hypothesizing mystical music) (Fereydoun singing in Persian passionately) (audience applauding) - I have to admit, I really But I suppose we're going to have to come and see you perform in a story to gether pop culture, state violence, the quest for understanding in a world that feels increasingly unintelligible and How did the two of you find, well, I know how you found each other.

But when you dec what were you looking for that King Raam was able to answer when you started to imagine this play?

- Well, there's a couple of things really, isn't there?

I think one is that I am really interested, so there is a way that, not all of my work is about Iran.

And certainly not all of your work is about Iran.

But this show kind of is, it's about issues that affect not just Iran, as I was saying.

It's about the relationship between dictatorships and countr So affects the whole world really.

But certainly in the case of Iran, I sometimes think There are basically, certainly in England, there are two ways that what Iranian cultu in Iran might be is thought of.

There's a kind of very stereotypical, nasty sort of terrorists, blah, blah, blah backwards, this kind of way of describing what Iran is.

And then there's a kind of Oxford educated, breathless description of like the glories of ancient Persia and this kind of thing.

And of course, neither of those is what Iran is.

Do you know what I mean?

And imme one of the things that joined us we both have a taste for iconoclasm.

And I think we both have a taste for like, we'll just press on the bruise and sort of lean into things being complicated.

And when we started talking about this work, it just became really obvious to me that Raam's presence on stage, it galvanizes a whole bunch of really interesting artistic and intellectual kind of questions about the way the world works right now, aside from what a Does that make sense?

- Yeah, it does.

And my understan you were telling a story of two different, what happens in this place, you're telli One is Farrokhzad and one is yours.

Your stories, they speak to each other.

And could you perhaps, I feel like we're denying the audience the chance to see this amazing performer.

- Fereydoun Farrokhzad.

- Yes, thank you.

Could we play a... - I can, absolutely.

So this video we're gonna show you is from the period of his li And he spends the 1800s making these incredible videos for like no money, 'cause he's a refugee, for the diaspora.

And to cheer people up made with like the tiny budgets of like an 1800s VHS recording studio.

But he broadcasts all that fun and charisma that he's always had.

- And the song tha - It's called Daro Baz Nemikonam and it's a very, what would you say it's about?

(audience laughing) It's a cheeky, seductive love song basically.

So he basically says (Javaad speaking in Persian) means I won't open the door.

And he s But because me and you are together, I'm not opening the door."

So the angel and knock at the window and forget them.

We're together and this could happen.

And that - That's a great description, (Javaad chuckling) That's exactly the words.

- So this is one of the central organizing f of this play.

- Yeah, that's rig I'm just gonna play this video then, thank you.

(Daro Baz Nemikonam by Fereydoun Farrokhzad) (romantic mystical music) (Fereydoun singing passionately # ### ## # ### ### ### # ## ### ## ### ## #### # (romantic mystical music) # ### ### ##### ### #### # # ## ### #### ## ##### #### # # ### ## ##### ### ### ## ### ### # # #### ### ### ### ## ### ### # # ### ## ### ### # # ### ## ### ### # (romantic cheerful mystical music) # ### ## ### ### # ## ###### ##### # # #### #### #### # ## ##### ##### # # ##### ## #### #### ## #### # # ## ## ### ## ### ## ## ## #### # # ### ## ##### ### ### ## ### ### # (audience applauding) - Aww.

That is a mustache for the ages and the two of you really have to up your game.

I don't know if you...

The way that he died in Germany, it was horrible.

He was attacked and assassinated in his kitchen by somebody who clearly he thought was a friend.

Seeing him in that video so filled with life and joy and thinking about his death, which is explored in this place.

It's very sobering.

I was hoping that you could talk about what it's like to have your story interwoven with that of another artist within this play.

And how you feel like you relate to this singer?

- I'm nowhere near an icon that Fereydoun is.

I'll never probably even be that type of status.

But there are the similarities that Javaad saw, being an artist in exile, being under surveillance, or being constantly under threat of violence.

They're very similar parts in both stories.

And in order to tell the bigger story of what Javaad is trying to tell I think it's really interesting to give people a per this terrible thing happened.

But it's still happening as well.

And in order to understand...

When I was going through all the crazy things around my father, it was so hard to just give a soundbite in an interview of how do you explain what you've been through for?

And that's why I d that solo storytelling be cause I could then expand.

And try to take people on a journ so they could walk in my shoes for an hour or two and really see what we went through.

And it reminds me of...

When I went back to Iran, I hadn't been there in like 10 years.

And when I went back there of optimism that maybe after the nuclear deal, that the doors were open and things will get better.

And there was this general consensu we were very naive to think that things would but we wanted to have hope.

We wanted to believe that things could get better for everyone.

And it was funny bec I had this "Searching for Sugar Ma where I would be this hipster in Brooklyn who nobody knew.

But now I went back home and there were p around asking for an au I'm like, "Holy shit, this is crazy."

And it's with everyone that we meet in our lives.

The person who's sitting next to us on the bus, or at work, or at a cafe.

To make that effort to really understand their story and to see the humanity in them will make us a better human being instead of just dismissing the other and not trying to understand what they're about.

- The play is definitely one of those that leaves you walking out and seeing the world a little differently.

Understanding that the at the bus could be an assassin or it could be someone who was a doctor in their home country and is now driving a bus.

Someone who's a rock star in an d a waiter at a high-end shish Th e stories that we carry inside of us are so dense and complicated and splintered off.

And the ways that we find each other is vast and profound and exciting.

You, of course, as a theater artist have been collaborating with people ever since you were 27 and entered theater after being a community organizer.

You had been working in a band but not in theater.

There are a lot of artists here.

People who've collaborated i What was it like for the two of you to start to collaborate to What was your process like?

- Back in Iran in order to perform music, they wouldn't give a permit to perform because there's such restrictions fr the Ministry of Culture and Guidance.

So in order to perform, I had to get a permit as a theat So we would have to do performances with other friends who did monologues in between my show.

So essentially it was a rock show with monologues in betwee and that's how I got more into the world of theater.

I became friends with a lot of kids who are pe and I just kept going to more shows.

And I really, really enjoyed Very similar, rock and roll is p And coming and then getting introduced to Javaad.

It was under the radar, no?

- [Javaad] That's ri - And I was I was doing my solo show.

I had some amazi Morgan, Jeanette, Bonnie, Arian Moayed from "Succession," a couple of these people who were mentoring me and helping me learn what the ro And when I got to see Javaad, I could sense by his intellect, by his excitement about what he was trying to do and the vision that he had that I definit And yeah, you can tell the rest, I guess.

- Yeah, no, thank you.

One of the... My company does make work, which is quite like, okay, it's possible to have fun working with me.

Do you know what I mean?

(Neda chuckling) I would say th For that to happen two things You need to be someone who really wants to get to the end of what you're trying to say.

It's not the first idea... Good enough doesn't work.

We're quite ambitious with what And so you need to come along with that ambition with us.

The other thing is you need to be comf And a lot of artists say that an d they're not and that's fine.

And that can be good for all kinds of, in fact you can be an incredible actor and absolutely not comfortable with uncertainty.

In fact, a classic four or five week theater rehearsal process definitely involves things b locked two weeks bef So it gets in people's bodies, but that's not how we work And what was amazing about working with Raam, maybe 'cause of the But that Raam was really up for that and he was really up for, it felt like you were really up for the journey together.

And if I can remind you of a moment I really enjoyed, basically I think you need to have faith in that process.

We talk a lot at my company about, we make work that leans into complexity.

And it leans into maybe this isn't gonna work.

There's a beautiful moment when we went to theater, colleagues and artists will know what I mean.

But went into tech rehearsal and Raam sort of that we've built like this.

And he l "This is pretty good," like that.

And I thought, well, more power Ra am for sticking with it.

But yeah, does that answer the question?

- And also one thing was really interesting for me coming from like a rock a it's we would rehearse once a week.

And that one rehearsal was five hours of us and then fighting with each other.

And then maybe 30 Theater people are very authoritarian.

It's so difficult.

A bunch of people, they and they're so detail oriented and perfectionist.

And I'm just like always looking for excuses to get out of work (Neda chuckling) - Those ex (Neda and Javaad chuckling) (Neda stuttering) - You were working with someone who's experiencing profound You were experiencing profound trauma.

Your father was murdered in 2018.

You made this piece probably just starting What was it like for you to be telling yo in the context of theater and what was it like for you to be working with somebo who must have been in extrao - Well, Javaad and Chris, who were writing the script, one thing I really appreciated about them was that nothing was forced.

And everything that we did had a very natur and organic rhythm to it where in order to tell this story what parts fit best, what parts are extra?

And even during the time, I remember when th the Woman, Life, Freedom Movement was hap And we had a discussion like, "We have to talk about this in It 's completely relevant.

It gives it much more life."

And I'm really happy that Chris and a decision to add all of that into the script as well.

It just, in my opinion, made it so much more relevant and being able to feel what's actually happening in the moment that right now in the world the people are experiencing.

So yeah, that's something about the writing aspect of the show.

- From my point of view, I've not been through what R with that level of brutality and personal tragedy.

So it's not something I can speak to in terms of the emotional, what it But where I definitely feel like a kinship and a sense of something together.

So like I've got a seven month old baby.

And my wife is English, as in English-English if you like.

And I've got a seven month old baby and my child has this unhingedly So he's named after, you guys I'm sure know about the Greco-Persian Wars.

So he's named after a chap who fought Alexander in a very heroic way and all this.

And the reality is because of the lit of journalism I've done around t because the kind of work I make, probably not a good idea to go to Iran.

Do you know what I mean?

So where is that we're both clear on, we're just gonna tell what we think is the truth.

Now there are Iranian artists whose work I really love and you guys would really love who go and come to Iran.

And that involves not saying some stuff.

Now that doesn't mean lying, it doesn't mean anyt It means which is directly about what is happening in Ira And that's the decision people take, and actually that's not for me "I think they're all terrible people," far from it.

Some of them are brilliant people individually who m But they've picked their lane.

I feel like we've got a different lane.

- Yeah, no, absolutely.

As artists if we don't have the courage to speak and say our truth, then what are we?

I feel like we're just, I don't know, just trying to create content for what type of There has to be something that tickles our curiosity or intellect that drive for something greater than And I find that when I'm work - [Neda] I wanna be really clear that this piece that these two guys are putting on next week is brillian It's incredibly smart.

It has great currents of grief and it also abides by the eighth and most important principle of the manifesto, which is it's fun.

It's really fun.

Can you talk about balancing su in this work of art and how you went about doing it?

- I love the multimedia aspect of it and just the way the stage is set and designe So with the script and the story, 'cause it's a very complex story that Jav It took me forever to find, I'm like, "Oh my God, this is what he's trying to say.

It's bri But I finally got what... 'Cause I didn't come from the more n So when I was getting into watching more theater I'm not gonna lie, I found a lot of it boring.

I was like, "Oh my God, how am I But I began to appreciate it a lot more.

And in today's day and age of doomscrolling, it's good to have this multimedia where things are coming and going and projecting.

And the story's being told and there's an ama Me-Lee is on stage with us who has an incredible score.

Asha Reid is upstairs doing the podcast and it's just a wonderful team to work with.

And honestly most of my friends who have come to see the show, they're like, "It And I think that's a pretty good compliment in - Yeah, no, for me, basically, I would say that I think a lot about what it means to be a political artist.

And I think to be a political artist is a different thing to being a political There is a part of my life in which I am an activist and that is the part of my life where I know what the answer to something is or at least And so that informs some social or political activity.

And that might be anything from I knock on your door, and I ask you to vote a certain way in an election.

Or there's a bit of me that's more of a sort of straight writer of articles.

So I might pitch an article to a about what's happening in Iran or whatever.

If I don't know the answer to something, that's the kind of thing that I might try and make art about, make a An d so to me that says something about what political art is.

People will talk about, especially in the UK at the minute of there being a renaissance of political theater.

And it seems to me a lot of it isn't that thea and doesn't really have much politics.

Because it's slapping you around the face with And that's absolutely not what we are trying to do.

The work we make through this company, Again, why Raam being part of it is so im What we try and do is take stuff that we are wrestling with, that actually we think everyone is wrestling with.

These feelings about the political reality of where we live right now, of how we live right now that feels like just in the corner of our eye.

And we try and make that alive in a way that it sticks to people's souls, hearts, and minds.

If I can throw in a quotation, Nietzsche says that no one is ever convinced of any great truth.

They have to be seduced to it.

And it strikes me that there's something really true there about how So this work I hope is quite slippery and I hope it makes you laugh.

And I hope it kind of unnerves an d I hope it gives you a big swell of emotion at And I hope it's something that sticks in your mind and in your heart and that helps you process the world outside when you go back to it.

(audience applauding) - For two theater artists who are talking about a piece that is so deeply informed by music, I'm hoping Raam that you will sing us out.

Will you tell us about the last song you're going to perform for - This last song is called The Lazy Bee and it's a love song that I wrot with a partner of mine back in the day.

It was one of the first songs in Persian tha because I used to sing i 'Cause it was funny growing up in the undergrounds, I thought, oh, that was the I could do, being like a punk rock who sings in But I'm like, "I don't wanna sing i But then I started singi and people really connected to it.

And this song is also the intro And it's a love song about this person who's chasing this queen bee essentially.

It's like, "When will it be my turn?"

And there's this sense of melancholy where there's this line in it that I was telling you about earlier where in Iran they make me censor.

'Cause everything you have to do had to go through so many different layers of censor It was really annoying as an artist.

And there was this line th ere's a stranger in my bed but the sheets they smell of An d it's whatever.

And the guy comes in like, " We can't have this, this is too sexual.

People are gonna get horny in the au or they're gonna get..." And I'm like, And they asked me to change it to like, there's a st the walls, they smell I'm like, "But that Li ke, who rubs themselve - That sounds even more perverted actually.

(Raam stuttering) - I alwa you take your freedoms for granted.

The smallest things in ou always trying to invade and tell you how to live and act We have a responsibility over here on this side of the world.

We're ab to use that as an opportunity So thank you all for having us tonight, I guess.

- And you're gonna play the last song?

- Yeah, I'll go play it out.

(audience applauding) - This is the song about th (audience laughing) - It's the title of my podcast.

Masty o Rasty comes from this song as well.

It's about being intoxicated and speaking the truth 'Cause that's when you feel you're a and you can just pour your heart out.

(tender romantic melody guitar music) (tender romantic melody guitar music) (King Raam singing passionately in Persian) (tender romantic melody guitar music) (King Raam singing passionately in Persian) (tender romantic melody guitar music) (King Raam singing passionately in Persian) (tender romantic melody guitar music) (King Raam singing passionately in Persian) (tender romantic melody guitar music) (tender romantic melody guitar music) (tender romantic melody guitar music) (King Raam singing passionately in Persian) (King Raam singing powerfully heartfelt in Persian) (King Raam singing powerfully heartfelt in Persian) (tender romantic melody guitar music) (tender romantic melody guitar music) (King Raam singing passionately in Persian) (tender romantic melody guitar music) (King Raam singing passionately in Persian) (tender romantic melody guitar music) (King Raam singing powerfully heartfelt in Persian) (King Raam singing powerfully heartfelt in Persian) (tender romantic melody guitar music) (King Raam singing powerfully heartfelt in Persian) (tender romantic melody guitar music) (tender romantic melody guitar music) (King Raam singing passionately in Persian) (King Raam singing powerfully heartfelt in Persian) (King Raam singing powerfully heartfelt in Persian) (King Raam singing powerfully heartfelt in Persian) # Ba ra ba ba # # Ba ra ba ba # (King Raam singing passionately in Persian) (King Raam singing powerfully heartfelt in Persian) (King Raam singing passionately in Persian) (King Raam singing passionately in Persian) (audience applauding and cheering) (audience applauding) - Before we close, let me just ask either one of you if there's anything else you'd like our audience to know about the play that is going to be performed next week?

- Again, I feel that's all out there really.

I quoted Nietzsche about six minutes ago and I always feel like that's the point where there's nothing more to get out.

(Javaad chuckling) (audience laughing) - I think that you'v of what King Raam, Javaad Alipoo Thank you so much, what an honor.

- Thank you.

- Thank you.

- Thanks.

- Goodnight.

(audience applauding and (people conversing off-mic) (people conversing off-mic) (people conversing off-mic) (people conversing off-mic)