| Description | In 2021, Davoud Zara was awarded an Ibsen Scope Grant for the project Rosmer's Syndrome.
The jury's conclusion: Iranian theatre director and actor Davoud Zare takes up one of the darkest plays of Ibsen’s heritage (Rosmersholm) and theoretical views of Guy Debord, Timothy Snyder and Giorgio Agamben, and is working on a new adaptation where he brings to light the conservative (Dr Krøll) and liberal (Mortensgaard) forces and their desired strategic alliance to the clergyman (John Rosmer). Zare claims that “Rosmersholm is no longer a place, but a situation”. The situation that prompts Rosmer not to sacrifice his life, but adapt to the reality where roles and missions are intertwined, as they all have become part of the “spectacle” and “democracy show”. “The decline of a nation is much more tragic than a death of the main character”. The jury is intrigued by such a reading of the play. Zare deconstructs the original play and builds his adaptation as a series of narrations. The narrator - Brendel, “an historic conscience who is witnessing the decline of a nation” - defines the symptoms of the “Rosmer Syndrome” and reflects on obedience, resistance, and solidarity, mechanism of “the spectacle” and how it structures a modern society, freedom and democracy, manipulation and propaganda, what it means to be a responsible member of a society, etc. These philosophical detours are illustrated with dialogues from the original play or dialogues inspired by Ibsen’s texts. |
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