Rss

Thinking About Persepolis

Posted by :James Howden On : March 21, 2008
0

Category: At First Glance

Tags:, , , , , , ,

(This is adapted from a piece I wrote for the Grand River Sachem earlier this year.)

What can I tell you? I’m fascinated by many things Iranian. An Ottawa girl, whose parents fled Iran not long after the Revolution in 1982, won Canada’s largest university scholarship in January, in large part because of her activism in publicizing the human rights violations of the Iranian government. (17. Wow! What were you doing at 17? I was mostly trying to perfect my jumpshot.) I’m also a fan of Marjane Satrapi’s bittersweet graphic novel, Persepolis, which has just come out in cinematic form. Persepolis (the ancient Greek name for the Persian empire) was born of a similar love for Iran and lament for its struggles and the oppression of many of its best people.

But now hear this (the tragedy of speechwriting, exhibit A): many people can’t hear mention of Iran without the malignant phrase “axis of evil” echoing around in their skulls. (The George Bush speechwriter who coined this famous political mantra, David Frum, is actually Canadian. I loved his mother Barbara, journalist/interviewer extraordinaire, but his influence in America is no cause for flag-waving, say I.) That Iran is a troubled state with shaky governance is obvious. I am only too aware of some of the political and religious repression that goes on there — my spiritual brothers and sisters have endured nearly two centuries as scapegoats — but I also appreciate Iran’s mighty contributions to world civilization.

The Zoroastrian and Bahá’í Faiths were born there, and some of the fairest fruits of Islamic civilization grew in Persian soil (including the towering mind of Avicenna – Ibn-Sina – a “renaissance man” who pre-dated the Renaissance by hundreds of years). Cyrus and Darius, as we call them in Western histories – Suroosh and Daryoosh would be more nearly correct – are only the best-known kings of a Persian empire that was the greatest of its age. The poetry of Omar Khayyam and especially of Hafiz are landmarks of Iranian culture. In my small contemporary experience, I know some of the sweet expressions of Iranian cinema, music, cuisine and their perfection of the art of courtesy. I see beautiful faces, generosity and a deep pride in their rich and ancient culture. There is so much more to Iran than nukes and turbaned mullahs.

If you’re interested in more on this intriguing and deeply important country, I can recommend a couple of things. Jean-Daniel Lafond – known in Canada mainly as the husband of our Governor General, Michaëlle Jean – is a prominent documentary film-maker. Over a year ago, I saw his 2001 film Salám Iran: A Persian Letter and heard Lafond interviewed immediately afterward. He followed, in his film, the return of an Iranian Canadian, living in exile since the revolution, to his mother and his motherland after two decades away. Lafond collaborated in this film with the writer (Persian Postcards: Iran After Khomeini), translator and lover of Iranian culture Fred A. Reed. In early 2004, the pair returned to Tehran. It was the eve of elections that would spell the end of the reform movement and install the hard-line conservative regime of President Ahmadinejad and all the blustering and crackdowns that came with it.

Lafond’s and Reed’s interactions with ordinary (and extraordinary) Iranians resulted in their newly published book Conversations in Tehran. I still haven’t read it yet, but I was impressed by these two men at an Ottawa Writers’ Festival event. They are worldly, compassionate, scholarly and curious. I detected no particular axe to grind, although it was clear that they hope for more openness and less theocracy in Iran, and for greater understanding and appreciation of the country everywhere else. These are the kind of films and books that most of us never look at, but we’d see the world in a much more interesting light if we more frequently did. These authors aren’t showmen. They are understated, moderate, marvellously articulate and, in their quiet ways, intensely passionate. They love Iran and Iranians with such intelligence and force that no one who listens could fail to think or say, “Maybe there’s more to Iran than I thought.” What Fox News gives us surely isn’t the whole story!

And I know how Reed and Lafond feel. I have much to be grateful to Iran for: some of my most deeply cherished friends and co-workers, for one thing, and for a Persian exile’s vision of peace and hope that keeps me sane, that helps me walk a faithful path with (fairly) intelligent feet. Salam, Iran, indeed. Salam means “peace”, and may it someday be so.

Arts and Remembrance

Posted by :James Howden On : March 19, 2008
0

Category: At First Glance

Tags:, , , , , ,

(This rambling wreck careened out of a keyboard when days were colder in Ottawa, Canada, where the pro hockey team is a source of civic anxiety and depression, but where the temperatures sometimes now hit double digits by mid-afternoon. Celsius.)

Reasons that Ottawa is great, Article 5, Subsection 3, Clause 11: the National Arts Centre is a five-minute drive from my house. (Okay, the last time, it took 10 because we’re the snow capital of the world right now. We’re getting another 25 centimetres this week. Me back, me achin’ back!  But the sun is lingering longer and I believe in melting.)

Back to the NAC. Ballerina Bride still loves to see the occasional dance piece, although she has little patience with the avant-garde stuff. It’s all pretty new to me, so I end up enjoying the fascination with oddness while she boils and filibusters non-verbally. We recently switched to a dramatic presentation, because she’d seen the director’s name in some promo material. That can’t be the Yvette Nolan that was my manager at Swenson’s Ice Cream and then my roommate in Winnipeg, can it?! said the once and future Twirler. While she was studying at the Royal Winnipeg Ballet, my bride lived with an Yvette, though she hadn’t known her as a theatre person. But Yvette had been part Aboriginal, and this was a native-themed play at the NAC, so maybe just maybe…

Absurd coincidence appeals to me, too. When she showed me material for Death of a Chief, I noticed a name from my teaching past, that of a girl from the Six Nations Reserve who had silently suffered through my grade 11 writing class. Yeah, but there are lots of Johnsons and it’s a pretty big country. But the play looked interesting, even if there weren’t old friends and students in key roles: it was a Native North American spin on Shakespeare’s classic tale of leadership and rivalry, Julius Caesar. And so, to the National Arts Centre we went.

[He finally gets ’round to the review.] In the Studio Theatre, the stage was bare, except for a curved arrangement of what looked like rocks. Black-out, and when the lights slowly came up, there were simply-costumed actors lying on the stage, slowly moving and then slowly chanting traditional Aboriginal songs. There were coloured banners – one of them a road which we later learned was an evocation of the troubles between white developers and Native activists near my old home town, along southern Ontario’s Highway 6 – and stylized movements and nary an English word. We were taken to a primal place of dance and song and symbol, and we were there for a good ten minutes. I was expectant, fascinated, with only the smallest tinge of impatience.

And then in walks Cassius, played by a short, fierce woman. “Yon Cassius has a lean and hungry look,” comes the familiar Shakespearean line, delivered by a tall, slender, female Caesar with a long white ponytail. It was jarring, and purposely so. Suddenly, the ensemble, which has been wordlessly weaving a visual and auditory tapestry of traditional Native culture, switches into a condensed but textually familiar performance of Shakespeare. Caesar wears a brightly coloured robe, others wear buckskin or hooded sweatshirts, and the swords of the Roman senators and warring factions become the flint knives of Aboriginal leaders, both modern and ancient, disputing for power.

It was a fascinating performance. We soon became used to a female Caesar (Monique Mojica), and an Aboriginal Brutus (Keith Barker) who plots her downfall out of concern for his home and native land. And the delivery of Shakespeare’s lines was strong, though for this lover of the Stratford Festival, a few lesser performances were grating. (Nothing has ever compared to the brutality committed by Keanu Reeves as Don John in a cinematic version of As You Like It. Wow. His syllables clanked like stones in a bathtub.)

As unsettling as the opening is – and the initial mash-up of Shakespearean English and tribal custom – the piece overall worked well. I watched avidly. And when, at the death of Caesar, the soft, mournful chanting begins anew, it feels like a natural and homespun part of the world that the Native Earth Performing Arts troupe has woven.

The play arose from a joke. Aboriginal actors, playwrights and directors were discussing how they could widen their theatrical possibilities. After all, there are only so many parts for noble savages and other ethnic clichés. One of the performers flippantly said, “Why can’t we do an all-native Julius Caesar? It’s really just about Aboriginal politics, after all.” That offhand comment developed into this production and, yes, the joker was my wife’s old roommate, director Yvette Nolan. And when I picked up my program before the show began, I was delighted to see that Decius (and several other roles) were indeed taken by my former student, Falen Johnson. Nifty!

Falen was good, very watchable and with command of the language. After Diana and I talked to Yvette, Falen was also open to post-show meetings with an unnamed old fella; I’m sure Yvette had forgotten my name. The silent, rather delicate young Goth-dressing woman from a long-ago grade 11 class was, after the show, a strong-voiced, laughing (but very serious) actor. What a treat it was for both Diana and me to be able to lurk near the dressing rooms and speak to a couple of the principals, especially since it was a chance to make connections with our pasts.

And to think it all happened on Elgin Street. (I wonder how the play was received in The Big Smoke (Toronto), where it ran for a week or two at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre.)

Return of the Creature

Posted by :James Howden On : March 17, 2008
0

Category: At First Glance

Tags:, , ,

(An item recovered from a memory stick, frosted white while lost in the chalk tray…)

A year ago last September, I wrote a short on-line meditation about the slight disorientation I felt, after many years of trying to make classrooms live, at NOT being chalk-stained and eager at that time of year. Part of it went like this:

 (September 6, 2006) “It’s Labour Day Tuesday and, for the fourth straight year, I am skipping school. It’s about 2:30 p.m., and in the olden days I would have been well into the last teaching period of the day. The Teacher Dreams – can’t find my classroom, can’t find my clothes, don’t know what subject I teach – are over. The performance anxiety – can I still DO this? – evaporated two minutes into period 1, and I would now be feeling the great fun of a new beginning (even though the marking pile already grows thick) and the eagerness to find out who these kids are and what we’ll be able to do together.

“I would be in my element. I might be sitting at my desk watching them write their first journal entry (“All About Me by Me” or “What Am I Doing Here?”) or exercise or assigned reading, but more likely I’d be strolling about, interviewing students, offering random observations, observing the various adolescent species in their (un)natural environment. Or maybe I’d be standing at the front, leaning slightly against the chalk ledge, right ankle crossed over the left, rambling on. (The horizontal streak of chalk dusting my butt didn’t concern me; at least once, though, the grommets on my right hiking boot hooked the laces on my left, so that a particularly animated point I wanted to step up and make vaulted me face-first into the legs of the front-row desks. That was a good one. I bowed deeply, grinned maniacally, and blushed quite redly.)

“By this time, I would already have forgotten to send down the afternoon attendance check, so a (usually) cheery secretary calls to try again to get Mr. H. properly trained. But there are no staff meetings, no reporting deadlines, no rebellious kids (yet), no sense of depletion or the (inevitable) frustration of my most dearly held intentions. Hope springs in an educator’s autumn. This was always a great day to be a teacher…”

And on February 1, 2008, I had another one of those fine, hopeful, we-can-do-anything-together days. It wasn’t quite typical, because at my new school they send their students through their Semester 1 timetable in the morning; I didn’t see my new kiddies until the afternoon, and then only for a shortened period. With that, the in-flux timetables and the game-players who didn’t bother showing up the first day – and no, they actually didn’t miss much, except for me at my most charming and fun-loving! – we didn’t do much that was even vaguely curricular. But I started a relationship with students, got a few of my basic expectations across, and shed a little of my teaching rust.

By Monday, I was teaching my fool head off at Merivale High School, a southwest Ottawa academy that was surrounded by fields ten years ago and which is now boxed in by big box stores and malls and fast-food emporiums. (In other words, it’s a typical student’s dream, and a good spot for shopaholic teachers, too.) We are the Marauders. As a former student of McMaster University, that name and the colour maroon are more than comfortable. In fact, I told several people that I was feeling simultaneously disoriented and right at home.

I didn’t know where the photocopier was or have an office space to work from when I wasn’t teaching. I was teaching a course in Careers that I’d never taught before, and hadn’t yet realized that there IS indeed a textbook for it. I was always surprised by bell times and running head-first into Merivale routines — not to mention colleagues and students — that were new to me.

But at the same time, I was doing what I’ve done for awfully close to ever. Though I was foggy on lots of particulars and incidentals, I knew right where I was and exactly what I was doing. I was, once again, a full-time, ultra-dedicated, in-it-to-win-it educator. Thomas Wolfe famously said you can never go home again, but I’ve found that, if you don’t mind some of the rooms being re-arranged, you sure can. And I like it.