Making of…

Finding the Right Image

From the very beginning, even before I submitted my proposal, I described my project as the following: “Narrating an epic story with the aid of a series of images printed on a curtain.”(1)

Therefore, after submitting my proposal, the very first task I sat for myself was to find the right image. I was mostly looking online although I did look at some books and magazines as well. Given the popularity of the story I had chosen, Rostam and Sohrab, I knew I would find many different images after doing a simple Google search.

these are some of the images I found online after doing a quick search. T

here were many different types of pictures available so immediately I realized that I need to decide what type and style would fit my project.

I was looking at individual images from the story I had chosen, Rostam O Sohrab, in hope of putting them together and creating a “curtain.” However, since the story I had chose is an already exiting story, and a very popular one, in Iran, I was also hoping to find an already complete image for a “curtain.”The latter was more difficult to find but I did manage to find two and used one of them for my rehearsal process.

1) The idea of an image aiding the storytelling in narrating the story came from a traditional style of Iranian theatre called PardehKhani(Reading off the Curtain)

Rehearsal

I was planning to have the image printed on a large banner. However, for most of my rehearsal process I used a projector to project the image on the wall.

Photos by Camilla Brison

I tried to have the projected image in the background in as many rehearsals as possible. However, I did spent some of my rehearsal sessions without it, trying to imagining the image on the background.

Given the solo nature of my piece, aside from the few times when I had an outside eye, I was mostly rehearsing individually. Therefore, I would film myself as often as possible and I would review them later.

one of my rehearsal clips

Rehearsal – 2

In one of my rehearsal, I experimented with the idea of adding an additional performer to my project.

photos by Camilla Brison

Creating a New Image

Although the image I had found online was very useful for my rehearsal process, the resolution was not high enough for it to be printed on a large banner (1.5 to 2.00 meter). Therefore, I went back to my original idea of trying to make a huge image out of smaller images.

Finally a new “curtain” was designed by Khodadad Rezakhani

The image was then printed on a banner by AK Design & Print