Basically a danced drama, The Stone of Patience is as enigmatic as its title. Dramatic movement, sometimes with clicking-like tap sounds but mostly thunderous music, suggests violence. Predominantly solemn black-haired women, costumes, and curtains suggest action to be mourned. So a white dress on a woman character has her stand out in marriage (seemingly forced, thus rape) and, when the dress is rolled up on her belly, a pregnancy. Almost unbelievably, this activity may be the lightest part of the presentation. Here’s the program’s explanation of how woman (as shown in the drama) “under pressure of expectations about her role as a mother, wife, and woman...has to face lots of stereotypes.” Also the “performance talks about human addiction to religion, culture, and social rules.” Yes, in the beginning women are shown kneading bread. It becomes babies they must cuddle. Later, a woman on the periphery is shown with a rosary. Several women hang upside down on swings in the background and get down seemingly for something important, but mostly they move or connect pieces of furniture. What looks like a monstrous father or grandfather threatens the central woman physically with a wooden weapon. The man who impregnates her is only self-referenced. Everything is performed intensely, sometimes by supportive young women tap-tapping to move things or point out important factors in what may be an overall plot. I remember stuff like this was quite the rage on collegiate campuses in the ‘70s and into the ‘80s when many a (usually collectively devised) play presented marriage as martyrdom. These were, though, not only vivid as The Stone of Patience but also quite clear. Because I (and audience members I consulted or overheard) did not find the present drama as understandable, I can only resort for explanation to Zapadnia Theatre’s note, as follows: So there!
“The introduction to this stage play could be AatiqRahimi’s words: ‘There is a magic stone—sange sabus—a stone of patience. We need to put him (sic) in front of us and then it will hear our confessions. It will absorb—like a sponge—all our sorrows, cares, fears and wrongs. It will be waiting quietly and patiently. But one day it will crack under pressure of accumulate emotions’.”
