Drama, language and presence: an interview with Mammad Aidani,

published playwright, poet and university lecturer.

InnerChange Newsletter (ICN) March 2007

Mammad Aidani has created several plays which have been produced both in Australia
and overseas. He is currently teaching Writing for Drama and Performance at
Performance Department at Victoria University. He is also a Fellow at Australian
Centre at the University of Melbourne. His latest play will be staged at the Court House
Theatre (La Mama Theatre) in September this year.

ICN: You conduct drama workshops for actors and also those who wish to write. In these
workshops you deploy the concept of language to help participants free themselves up
from themselves and to enable them to write or occupy the characters of the play more
effectively. Can you tell us how do you see the relationship between language and drama?

Mammad: This is a very good question. I think that human nature is embedded in
language. For me the effective process of conducting a writing or drama session is based
totally on how individuals could find ways to liberate the meanings of things, as they
perceive them in their inner emotions and expressed both through their language and
body. Each word we use always speaks to others and us in the world. I believe that
language and the meanings of things we think of are contained in our bodies and hence
are part of our lived experiences of the world in which we have lived in. For me language
is language, it is not a tool we use to say things as many want us to believe. Language is
in our body and we live in our bodies, we live in language. Language is the habitat of our
thoughts, and our memories are; if you like; the house of our thoughts. We live in our
thoughts and memories which are in bodies and they all are in the world.

ICN: How do you apply this idea?

Mammad: In my work I search to encourage my students to use their intuition in order

to arrive at a point of awareness of language which allows them to feel and recognize who
they are. We work on both positive and negative feelings as well as blocks that
undermine the fluid path of our interpretations of things in our lives. We focus on
opening up to different visions and perspectives in order to understand our relationship
with ourselves as well as others and hence the world around us. In simple words we
reflect on the power of now as our path, which allows us to embrace our deep feelings
about things; past, present and future; through our imaginations and the power of our
interpretations in order to learn more about our inner spaces and the unsought of our
thoughts.

ICN: Can this concept be related to people’s day to day lives and if so how?

Mammad: Yes I think this approach can help anyone who wishes to deal with their
personal and relational issues as well as those who wish to become inspiring writers,
artist and actors and need to learn how to penetrate into the hearts of the subject matters
which they are engaged in creating, or in actors’ case, lives of the character(s) they have
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to act on the stage.
For example in the case of actors in the workshops we discuss our roles as performers in
the real world and explore how actors learn to act the characters that are created by the
playwright on the stage as well. We stress that in theatre, in order to achieve a fulfilling
performance, the actors must be honest with their own inner feelings. We examine how
otherwise they face difficulties in emotionally and physically adapting to the needs of
character’s personality on the stage and hence act without convictions.
I always ask the participants to invite a feeling and let that feeling speak for itself. I get
them to physically move around on the stage and find ways to connect with that feeling
in a creative and imaginative way. This exercise usually helps and stimulates
participants become conscious of their deep feelings about things and the world around
them.

ICN: Tell us more about “inviting a feeling and let it speak for itself”.

Mammad: To invite a feeling and let it speak for itself is the motto of my workshops.
Throughout my years as a learner, teachers and theatre practitioner, I have learnt that
we don’t need to watch our feelings but instead we need to authentically learn to listen to
their voices and recognize the ways in which they appear in our lives. We have to let
them be and by doing so we gradually and patiently learn who we really are. Through
this method I have witnessed how individuals learn to approach their lives freshly and
reflect on their resistances and deal with them effectively. The approach usually helps
them gain a greater knowledge about the importance of presence, which allows them to
move on towards a fulfilling state of mind and body.

And ultimately participants also learn to become willing and productive storytellers and
become authentic interpreters of their lived experiences, which contain their stories.
This, I have noticed, has given them unique inner powers, which reminds them of who
they were and are.

ICN: You seem to be talking about self-awareness, how does all this help increasing it?

Mammad: Without entering into conversation with others we will never be able to fully
know our selves and the world in which we live.

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