Sahand: In My Father Held a Gun, there are some elements you can associate with storytelling - direct communication, erasure of the 4th wall, etc.- and others that are more associated with theater, like scripted dialogues between two people. This border between theatre and storytelling is not so relevant to us. We really use what we feel we need at that moment, for that project or for that particular story. Sometimes, it’s closer to traditional storytelling, when the material comes from folk tales and when one person tells a story for a long time and another makes music for him (laughs). Other times, we can be very close to theatre. For us, these two worlds are merging and we have the benefit of taking what we want out of both.

Raphael: Storytelling isn’t something different than theatre. It’s adding something rather than inventing a completely separate art form.

In the show, you are performing as yourselves. How do you work towards this “quality of presence” or “direct communication” that is an important aspect of storytelling, but that also represents a challenge for many actors in general?

S: I think you can reach an answer when you define how other people don’t do it. For me, in a theatre piece, actors are often playing their idea of what communication looks like.

R: I was trained as an actor. There I discovered storytelling, a form that for me was very pure. Sahan was never trained as an actor but as has been telling stories for 18 years now. 
A lot of theatre plays break the 4th wall nowadays, but most of the time the actors speak above the audience and not directly to them. This we do differently. When we ask a question, we really ask it. And we wait for a response! It’s also a vulnerable position because you don’t have any control.

And does the interaction with the audience play an important role in the performance?

R: It does. It comes back a few times in the show, and with time we also learned to manipulate it.

S: Sometimes it also really surprises us. One time, it really hit me. In the show I tell a story about my father fighting the Shah of Iran. One day, someone in the audience who was probably a supporter of the American and right wing policies said in the middle of the show: “But under the Shah, everything was good! It’s the ayatollah’s who came and completely destroyed the country!” He didn’t know that at that moment I was going to speak about what happened to my father under the Shah, that he was tortured and almost killed. We had a real moment. It actually impacted me, or hurt me even. But that’s brilliant because with after that interaction, I could address my story to him.

How do you see the relation between the political issues you want to address and some kind of entertainment? Do you also look towards stand-up comedy for example?

R: The performance starts in a very funny and light way. There is an edge underneath, a kind of a slapstick thing. That’s how we open the audience, and when they are open, they let their guard down. That’s very important for the piece and for how it’s constructed. It uses a lot of elements of stand-up comedy as well. But we are leading them somewhere. There a lot of punch lines, people laugh, and we play with the audience. We ask them for example if they can you guess who is the Iranian and who is the Israeli and to raise their hand accordingly. We trick them because Sahan does an Israeli accent! (laughs).They all raise the wrong hand, and then we say: « Perfect! You have it completely wrong! »

S: We also tell them that this show was inspired by our last visit in Brussels, when we were presenting our previous show. We were supposed to play five times but two of the performances got canceled because of the terrorist attacks. So we make fun about certain issues, but at the same time, we are very much aware of the social and political reality in which this work came to be and how it hits us.

You are both very much engaged in transmitting the art of storytelling to others. Aside from your practice as actors, you are also workshop leaders, artistic directors and the founders of The Mezrab Storytelling School. So a big part of your lives is actually dedicated to this fundamental and ancestral act of passing on a story. Between all this, do you still feel the pleasure of telling a story? And if yes, where does it come from?

R: For me this work allows me to meet people individually, beyond their ‘masks’. And by masks, I mean the kind of constructed patterns of behavior created by culture, or family, or psychological history, etc. You can create a story, but that’s only part of the work. The other part is you conveying that story and relating to a public. The process of teaching is then about becoming aware of all these layers and removing them so the performer can stand in front of the public and be open, allowing things to come in and transmit them. So in a way, “removing all the masks”. And that process is like arriving at a place that has no stories: a childlike place, a pre-story phase, before all the stories that were placed upon us and create the character called “Raphael” or “Sahan”. This is for me the biggest point of pleasure. Arriving to a place where there are no stories…!

According to you, what makes the quality of a story? And what kinds of stories are interesting or relevant to tell today?

S: I feel that in different phases of our lives, we have different reasons to look for certain stories. The question of why I am telling stories was actually not so present before I met Raphael. There was a simple pleasure, purely for the sake of finding and telling stories. And then, when you start digging, you ask yourself: but why do I have this pleasure? Is it because I need to be seen? If yes, what does that mean? What is it in me that feels unseen? Is it who I am in society, in my family, or in a classroom? Once you start to go into these questions, you see that your reason for telling and finding stories is constantly evolving. And that brings up a lot of new material. In that perspective, it’s not that important whether these stories are your personal stories or stories that you find in the Greek mythology or in the folk tales. They can both answer to the same need brought by the story you want to tell. That need or engagement is very fascinating. And it is endless.

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Interviewed by Flore Herman on 7 novembre 2019