Reza Abdoh: 1963-1995. (Iranian American theater director)(In Memory)(Obituary)

Reza Abdoh, the Iranian/American director whose spectacular theatre productions startled and engaged audiences in die United States and Europe, died in New York City on 11 May 1995 at the age Of 32- Abdoh's death was due to AIDS, and his 1990s productions with his Dar A Luz company had been largely centered on the fact of his HIV+ status. Quotations from a Ruined City (1994), his last major work, juxtaposed life in the "ruined" cities of New York, Los Angeles, and Sarajevo with life in the "ruined" HIV+ body. Born in Tehran in 1963 to an Italian mother and Iranian father, Abdoh went to London at the age of 11, where he began his theatre education by watching Peter Brook's A Midsummer Night's Dream. A precocious student, Abdoh developed his sense of theatricality into a driving certainty about what can and should work onstage. He went to California in the early '80s to study film, but maintained his central focus on live performance with a series of low-budget productions performed first in unlikely Los Angeles venues, and then as featured events at the Los Angeles Theater Center. Abdoh's artistic and personal intensity had great attractive powers, and he drew to him actors, producers, designers, filmmakers, writers, and sound artists who shared a devotion to his work. In 1991 this energy coalesced into the Dar A Luz company, which then produced a series of fervent multimedia spectacles mixing acting, dance, sound-mix, video, and film: The Hip-Hop Waltz of Eurydice (1991), Bogeyman (1991), The Law of Remains (1992), Tight Right White (1993), and Quotations from a Ruined City.

Abdoh's work was unusual for the 1990s American theatre scene because (like 1960s avantgarde theatres) it focused primarily on the ensemble performance c of a large continuing company, and because (unlike much postmodernist performance) it so openly sought to define Abdoh's point of view: at once queer, non-Western, antihierarchical, political, and mystically religious. The work of Dar A Luz had just begun to emerge from general critical consternation to a plateau of national and international fascination when Abdoh fell ill in April during rehearsals for a new production. His death at an age when most artists just begin to enter a period of new productivity is not unusual in this age of AIDS, but it is not necessarily "tragic," in light of the fact that Abdoh saw the disease as a symptom, a symbolic manifestation of, or nexus for, late-20th-century culture. Abdoh's theatrical brilliance was readily evident in his striking use of sound, image, and text; but most importantly, all this brilliance was always in service to his ability to mold theatre into a multileveled, eminently recognizable evocation of where-we-are. That kind of achievement has historically had the ability to leave its mark on what follows.

Demythologizing or Betraying?

To the Editor:

I was the assistant director to Wlodzimierz Staniewski of Gardzienice Theatre Association in its crucial period from 1989-1991. Since then I have remained an associate member of the company, and maintain regular professional contact with Staniewski and the group.

After such involvement with Gardzienice, I was saddened to read Paul Allain's poor article in the recent edition of YDR ["Coming Home: The New Ecology of the Gardzienice Theatre Association of Poland" 39, 1 (T145) Summer 1995:93-I2I]. Indeed, it was doubly disappointing, since his time at Gardzienice seemed to be positively and fruitfully used by both him and Staniewski.

Despite his recent collaborations with Gardzienice, Allain seems to wish to look back, with some nostalgia, to an earlier period of the company's work which he never witnessed. Allain indicates that this was a time of greater integrity for the group, and he appropriates this as evidence for his underlying thesis that Polish theatre is in crisis.

Allain continues to press this notion upon Gardzienice, forcing his argument with a vigor that leads him to resort to equally debatable evidence to persuade his case such as the company's debt (how many companies are not in debt?) and the turnover of key personnel (key personnel have come and gone throughout the company's history).

Furthermore he appears to be noncomprehending in the fact of what he calls Staniewski's theorizing," which he describes as "vague and mystical" (94). I find this extraordinary when referring to a director who works and writes with immense precision, whose language may be romantic but never vague, and who achieves results that are appreciated (and comprehended) worldwide. Indeed, in this time of supposed crisis, Staigiewski's works are appreciated now more than ever.

There are two sections in the article where Allain succeeds in conveying the essential qualities of Gardzienice Theatre Association: when describing the village of Gardzienice and the training. Significantly, these passages are uninhibited by his desire to prove an inappropriate thesis.

But the final paragraph is an unfortunate crystallization of the contradictions Allain's thesis often gives rise to. After criticizing Staniewski for bowing to (or being corrupted by) the destabilizing pressures of Western influence, he then invites us to believe that Staniewski's incontrovertible statements forbid "the …