No rehearsals, no director, a sealed script and a different performer each night. That’s the promise made for this production of White Rabbit Red Rabbit by Iranian playwright Nassim Soleimanpour. Since its premiere in 2011 this play has been translated into 25 languages and performed over 1,000 times. Whoopi Goldberg, Nathan Lane and John Hurt are some of the many luminaries who have tackled this unique theatrical event.
Drawing attention to a year long international theater shutdown due to the pandemic, this play marks the anniversary with a global performance of this piece. In every time zone throughout the world the play was performed and live streamed on the same day at 8:00 pm. Twenty four hours in row. Et Alia Theater in New York City represented the United States.
Giorgia Valenti takes the stage. She is handed an envelop and opens it. A script she has never seen before. The set is a desk, a chair, two glasses of water, a vial and a ladder. There are thirteen audience members wearing masks. The playwright is playful from the start. “I don’t know what the actor is doing,” he writes. In his mind, this is not a play. Rather it is an experiment.
The audience is called on in the script to jump on stage and fill roles such as the white rabbit. Can I have a volunteer bear? A story about a rabbit wanting to go to the circus begins. Trouble ensues for the long-eared creature. No one seems to be acting as who they are supposed to be. Mr. Soleimanpour always has had “a dream of writing a play that makes one free.”
The piece jumps in and out of its story. The tale of the rabbit going to the circus is followed by an exquisitely rendered and disturbing bunny version of Pavlov’s dogs. Audience participation keeps the mood light but the themes hit the bullseye. This play examines how the past makes the future and how the future is the past. In our world dominated by racial, societal, political and religious hatred for “the other,” humankind’s collective evolution as to how we got here is beautifully abstract and entertainingly realized.
White Rabbit Red Rabbit is, however, imminently approachable. The play often takes time to be in the moment with the audience. When Mr. Soleimanpour seems to be getting serious, he abruptly changes the storyline. “OK, enough fun… on to suicide!” What follows is a deeply thought provoking meditation on all of our individual life decisions. This would include those of us who choose living. Life, in his words, is “the longest solution for dying.”
This play is nothing if not meta. The playwright even gives out his email address for post-show conversation. Given the state of the theater industry over the past year, this exercise came across as a giant group psychological therapy session. The playwright’s voice is clear, engaging, quirky and very fun. The play’s construction demands attention. He wants to know who is watching. We want to experience the words and take in this very distinct and intense voice.
For our socially distanced pandemic times, this live stream connection was a vivid reminder of the void left by our inability to be a community and share in the celebration of the creative process and what it says to us as individuals and as a society. I’m going to send a copy of this published blog post to Mr. Soleimanpour. He describes himself as a very hairy man. How hairy? “Like chewing gum stuck on the floor of a barbershop.” I’m certain everyone around the world laughed as hard as I did. We are, after all, more similar than different. We’ve just not been trained that way.
Et Alia Theater presented White Rabbit Red Rabbit in association with Berlin’s Aurora Nova.