by ROBERT WEINBERG

Excerpt:

But there are always more stories to tell from Shahnameh and more ways to tell them. The initial challenge made by Melissa has now reached hundreds of thousands of appreciative people through other media and platforms. For example, an 80-minute puppet show, Song of the North, features 483 puppets, nine actors and 208 animated backgrounds. “There is nothing like it,” says Hamid. “I literally sat down and dedicated three years of my life to it. Whatever I had in my heart and my talent and my mind, I poured into this production. It’s an almost cinematic experience. For the audience, it’s like watching a movie while backstage we are actually making that movie in real time.”  Another hugely elaborate shadow theatre piece, Feathers of Fire, won the 2019 UNIMA award for excellence in live performance and design and found a high-profile fan in the legendary film director Francis Ford Coppola, who praised its “spectacular cinematic wizardry.” Coppola then provided the introduction to an audiobook of Shahnameh in which the stories are brilliantly told by award-winning voice actor Marc Thompson, accompanied by 12 hours of evocative sound design and music  Then, an animated film and dynamic lighting design by Hamid formed the backdrop to concerts by cellist Yo-Yo Ma’s Silk Road Ensemble, in collaboration with virtuoso Kayhan Kalhor. Unfortunately, the performances were halted by the COVID-19 pandemic.  “I’m thinking about actually reviving that and expanding it into a much bigger concert,” says Hamid.

Full article on IRANWIRE.

US Premiere March 5-12, 2022
Harvey Theater, Brooklyn Academy of Music

From the Song of the North website:

Created, Designed and Directed by Hamid Rahmanian
Producer: Melissa Hibbard
Script written by Hamid Rahmanian and Melissa Hibbard
Original Score written & orchestrated by Loga Ramin Torkian
Featuring Vocalist: Azam Ali

Song of the North is a large-scale, cinematic performance combining the manual art of shadow puppetry with projected animation to tell the courageous tale of Manijeh, a heroine from ancient Persia, who must use all her strengths and talents to rescue her beloved, Bijan, from a perilous predicament of her own making and help prevent a war.  This epic love story employs a cast of 500 handmade puppets and a talented ensemble of nine actors and puppeteers, all of which come together to create a spectacular experience that advances the themes of unity, collaboration, and experimentation through performance and story. Song of the North, adapted from the Book of Kings (Shahnameh), challenges the Eurocentric worldview of art and storytelling through a contemporary multimedia experience of this classic Persian tale. (80 minutes)

Behind the scenes:

Feathers of Fire: A Persian Epic is a cinematic shadow play that features the white-haired Zal from his birth to his love story with Rudabeh, based on the Persian epic Shahnameh (‘The Book of Kings’). Created and directed by Hamid Rahmanian with graphics derived from the visual tradition of the region, rendered as puppets, costumes, masks, scenography, and digital animation.

Excerpts from Feathers of Fire and interview with Hamid Rahmanian:

Behind the scenes:

Sita Sings the Blues

This English-language animated film was written, directed, produced and animated by Nina Paley in 2008. It revisits the principle episodes of the Ramayana from Sita’s perspective and weaves together Indian and American culture.