Staging dreams

A play titled ‘The Dream of the Phoenix’ was staged at Ravindra Bharati on Wednesday as a part of the 19th edition of the Bharath Rang Mahotsav, organised by National School of Drama (NSD) in association with Government of Telangana.

The play is written and directed by Mohammad Khezeli, who hails from Iran. The 75-minute play has no dialogues and it was narrated through facial expressions and gestures. The play starts with explaining about the bird Phoenix, which has a capacity to reborn from ashes of its predecessor. In this play the main character, Khezeli (Painter) and his conscience are always in conflict.

In each scene, he reaches a point of dilemma where an important verdict needs to be given by him. In the play, the painter goes into a dream, where he was on a boat in the middle of the river and he confuses that he was in the dream or in a real world. Like this, in every situation he faces confusion. The play explains how people get different kinds of dreams and sometimes how they get affected.

Speaking about the play, the writer and director, Mohammad Khezeli said, “‘The Dream of the Phoenix’ is at the peak of its beauty and perfection. Great philosophers such as Rumi, Khayyam and Osho believed that when you feel that you are completely destroyed then start rebuilding yourself.

Every person could unconsciously have some latent desires such as murder, incest, etc, though he himself is not aware of them, but he tends to experience it. Because real life does not give the opportunity to experience it, the dream is the only safe time for finding it. Although each of our dreams and nightmares does not have a perfect meaning, they have a direct impact on our lives.”

“The painter in this play has some conflicts with himself in his dream, he experiences just minutes of his life into various forms. It is obvious that the emotional impact of each scene was far important for us that the definition of the story,” he added.