Conceived and Directed by Slobodan Dan Paich in collaboration with the ensemble
Actors, Dancers & Singers: Nazila Ghazi, Ali Tahbaz, Tom Franco, Alejandro Pinot, Zia Burchert, Ana Diane Landelle, Gabriela Chavez, Cyndera Quackenbush, Rashi Ramchandani
Artship Ensemble, San Francisco, 2010 Home Season Eight performances at CounterPULSE from May 6th to May 16th, 2010
Tender Stone, an original theater piece with an associated interpretative and visual art exhibition, has been the main focus of our incubation and rehearsal processes since May 2009.
The performance tells a story of passion, love, betrayal, and constancy in the political turmoil of the period — the Persian and Mogul empires of the 16th and 17th centuries. It is an intimate portrayal of the nurturing wisdom of women storytellers. The complexities and intricacies of a cultured woman in the Islam of the period, are personified by the play's main character Parmina, the Persan Queen, teacher and mentor of women and the young.
Tender Stone attempts to call up the collective memory, evoking an ancient wisdom, and to bring it into our contemporary world. The performance and its creation process also address the sub-theme of the need for stories and storytelling regardless of times and cultures — a need that responds to echoes of primordial myths and ways of knowing in the hidden depths of the molecular, cellular, and imaginative self in each one of us.
Images from the performance
