At its rare best, theater is a handshake contract between total strangers--- a guest and a host--- who have agreed to trust each other in an unfamiliar and often dimly lit space over an uncertain length of time and for purposes unknown.
For the guest, what is required is to sit, to listen, and to watch without trepidation or reservation.
For the host, it is to unveil a carefully designed, finely crafted, and honestly displayed series of sounds, movements, gestures, emotions, and ideas.
Unveiling, now that you mention it, is at the heart of Touchstone Theatre's quietly breathtaking new play, "Rent Asunder, A Story of Tahirih".
A lone and thoroughly engaging Nava Bastani, a resident of Anchorage, Alaska, plays the title role, but given the swift and fluid draping of a thin veil around her shoulders and head she conjures so many additional characters of various genders that this can't simply be called a one-woman show.
Foreknowledge of the veil and its own role in this play would lead you to understand that Tahirih was a woman not of this land, but a Persian poet and philosopher of the early 19th Century who was persecuted and eventually executed for, among other offenses, removing that veil and insisting upon emancipating women from the strictest constraints of the Islamic tradition and laws of her time.
You will additionally find abundant online references to Tahirih as the first martyr for women's suffrage, which we often wrongly regard as an American invention of the early 20th Century.
The director, William George, described the setting of the play as "A Twilight Zone airport'.
A nearly bare and darkened stage slowly comes into focus beneath soft light as a woman impatiently sprawls on a lone chair in a far upstage corner, her backpack dropped and spilling articles of clothing upon the floor, her cell phone ringing insistently and bringing unwelcome conversations with a husband from whom she is pleading to be set free, all the while fighting to be heard above the canned 1970s music that can only mean we're mired at the gate awaiting a flight whose number has yet to appear on the departure board.
Her palpably desperate need to flee and her helplessness to do anything other than abide her delayed liberation arouse memories in her of old stories and haunting events in the life of Tahirih, also called 'The Pure One'.
With the simplest tilt of her head, the airy fluttering of her fingers, and the flapping of her long arms like the wings of a songbird, Bastani resurrects people long dead whose lives and words her character needs revisit for her own inspiration and, perhaps, our own awakening.
Bastani is an unrushed and economical performer who widens the stage as easily as if blowing air into a party balloon.
She is able to make the lightest gesture, the slightest swaying of her hips, the waving of veils, the sliding of her feet transform an empty stage into a palace, then a dungeon, a garden, a torture chamber, and once again that airport terminal, each in its turn a more terrifying place of confinement and suppression.
I have insufficient background and understanding of the source material of this lovely production to be able to do justice to its historical and political significance.
But that in no way diminished the enrichment I drew from it, like a nourishing dinner of unfamiliar but nonetheless delicious and memorable ingredients.
The play is written by Ms Bastani, Mr. George, and Janet Ruhe-Schoen.
Rent Asunder will be performed Friday, August 17th at 8 pm and Saturday, August 18th at 2pm and 8 pm. Suggested donation is $20. Reservations may be made by phone, 610-570-1335 or email:
Touchstone Theatre is located at 321 E 4th St, Bethlehem, PA 18015.