Just outside the Old Strathcona Famers’ Market, a group of about 30 protestors gather near the Walterdale Theatre. The air is heavy with smoke from the wildfires (the air quality index sits at 11), but the protestors are still here, just like they are most weekends. As they get their homemade noisemakers of water bottles filled with stones ready, one hands me a flyer and says, “14 people were executed in Iran” just last night.
I’m here to meet with the Iranian half of the playwrighting duo that goes under the pseudonym Hengameh E. Rice. They use this pseudonym for one reason: to protect themselves. They say their recent play “is very critical of the Iranian regime.” But Anahita’s Republic, directed by local theatre veteran Brian Dooley, is already turning heads right here in Edmonton, and Rice is hoping to keep stirring the pot.
Rice says they love the Edmonton theatre scene, but in a city with a very large Iranian community and a massive South/West Asian community, they feel there is some lack of representation. “The South Asian community here have their own theatre,” says Rice. “They have their own performances, but it’s not integrated.” And while Rice admits that they could have had their play done in Farsi and run it for an all-Iranian audience in Toronto, it would have been counter-productive to what they are trying to accomplish.
“We want to break down these barriers,” Rice says, “That’s inclusion to me.”
Rice wants this story to reach people and show them the impact the regime has had on two generations of families, particularly the women within them. It seeks to show a different side of Iranian women. Rice says the Iran they know is very misunderstood and misrepresented. But for them, theatre is a way to change that.
Community theatre played an important role in Rice’s life at a pivotal time, “I was a bit lost, but I think theatre found me.” In 2009, Rice went to Iran for the election. While Rice had been back many times, this time was different, as the country erupted in protests after accusations of a rigged election. Back in Edmonton, Rice was at the Walterdale Theatre on a Friday night and ended up blown away by the community theatre’s performance of Come Back to the 5 & Dime, Jimmy Dean Jimmy Dean. With Iran’s Green Revolution and the election still in very recent memory, some gears began turning.
Through theatre, the two halves of the Hengameh E. Rice duo met, and, in 2019, Rice began pitching the first script for Anahita’s Republic, a play inspired by their time in Iran and their experiences as a Canadian immigrant. Initially, Workshop West Playwrights’ Theatre was in talks to produce it. But then artistic directors changed, production fell through, and it would be four years of continued barriers before Anahita’s Republic would make it to the stage in Toronto.
Tatiana Duque is another Edmonton theatre artist currently creating connections with the local theatre scene and Latin American theatre and culture. Shrina Patel’s work in Bombay Black helped bridge Edmonton theatre with Indian dance and culture.
Rice says plays like these, and interacting with people with very different experiences, is a way we can heal divides, break down barriers and bring people together. And with new players in the Edmonton theatre scene bringing different types of stories to our stages, we can challenge misrepresentations and inform people. Rice wants to make people think and get them to ask questions. “I think if people were more curious, we’d have a very different art community.”
Hours after watching Iranian protestors raise their hands and chant, “woman, life, freedom,” Rice sits in Backstage Theatre. They watch without ever revealing themselves, and as the play comes to a close, an actor shouts out, “Zan. Zendegi. Azadi.” The full house of Edmonton theatregoers sits in silence, and when the lights go dim, the whole place erupts in applause.
This article appears in the July/Aug 2023 issue of Edify
