The play Anahita’s Republic is about to premiere in Alberta, and has already had a run in Toronto. The story the play shares is one of privilege that distorts the struggle that women in Iran have been subjected to for decades.
The play came on stage after many tumultuous months of the Women Life Freedom uprising in Iran, hundreds of demonstrators were killed, 18,000 arrested, hundreds disappeared and many of the political activists in the prison were hanged. As a group of women in political exile we have been actively opposing and demonstrating against the Islamic regime of Iran over the past 43 years and have been following the events very closely to our hearts and minds. With the hope of seeing the long history of women’s struggle for freedom being celebrated on the stage, we went to see Anahita’s Republic in Toronto.
Anahita’s Republic is a play written by an Iranian writer with a pseudonym of “Hengameh Rice”. It is about the life story of a woman named Anahita living under the rule of the Islamic Republic of Iran. She appears to be a powerful and wealthy woman who has lived in Europe and gone back to Iran as a “modern” woman who supposedly supports women’s rights. With the help of her brothe, who is a member of parliament, she buys luxury goods from smugglers and flaunts her consumerism. Her impression of the Western culture is summarized by boutique shops and white people being racist.
The play is presented on three convoluted and confusing layers. To start, the title of the play toys with the name of an ancient Iranian goddess, Anahita, who symbolizes fertility, water, health, and healing. The main character Anahita does not demonstrate such qualities. Her so-called activism is profoundly dubious, in particular her involvement with the “One Million Signature Campaign”.
The campaign was a grassroot, social movement, launched in 2006 by a number of women’s right activists in Iran which, at the time, inspired many across the globe. It aimed to collect one million signatures to advocate the elimination of gender discrimination. The play distorts the history of the campaign and tarnishes the involved activists. Anahita, a wealthy entrepreneur and deep into consumerist culture, is far removed from women and men who were involved with social justice issues who participated in the campaign, and who suffered the consequences of their actions.
We have our own critique of the campaign’s politics for seeking change within the political and economic system of the regime. We acknowledge that any social movement can include various political views, but we do not find the treatment of this social movement by Anahita’s Republic to be justified as it humiliates and tarnishes the movement in its totality.
One of the tools of propaganda used by the Islamic regime has been to infiltrate and to mimic various grassroot organizations to undermine people’s efforts for real change. One would wonder if Anahita’s Republic has made such a parody and a politically responsible stage production?
We believe creating politically responsible art demands more in-depth work, including community consultation. But the mere action of consulting with the “community” does not absolve the social responsibility of cultural workers. Community consultation has sometimes been used by many, from politicians to grassroot and non-profit organizations, as well as art endeavours, to reproduce the tools of oppression. In other words, the issue of community consultation has become a crutch to explain away the arts that are politically clumsy.
This tokenism of using the identity of an Iranian writer or the consultation with some Iranians, has inadvertently resulted in echoing the Islamic regime’s politics as is the case in Anahita’s Republic. Community consultation done in this way silences the more progressive voices of the communities.
The present struggle of Women Life Freedom demands the toppling of the regime and the movement is unwilling to compromise in any way except for a radical change. Courageous Iranian people have already demonstrated and many lost their lives in the hands of this brutal regime. In the light of such sacrifices, one would hope that any form of art that intends to tackle this subject, or any aspect of the struggle, would be more conscientious of the consequences of their work and the understanding of the social movements in Iran and even of those of the Iranian diaspora.
Conscientious art demands time, care for the community, and clarifying whose side one stands, the oppressors or the human rights activists. Anahita’s Republic has simplified and humiliated a social movement. A well informed audience of Iranian politics watches a play that does not stand against the reality and the complexity of social movements in Iran.
Editor’s Note: The identity of the authors of this piece is being kept anonymous because of potential threats to the authors and their families back in Iran.
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