Naghmeh Samini is an acclaimed playwright and teaching artist. She is the co-founder of Seda Iranian Theatre Ensemble and recently directed a sold-out run of the Pulitzer Prize-winning play English at ArtsWest. She will be teaching Playwriting at Freehold this fall. We sat down with Naghmeh to discuss how she fell in love with theatre, why she is passionate about the stage, and what students can look forward to in her class this fall.
Hello Naghmeh, and welcome to Freehold. When did you first start writing?
Yeah, that’s a great question. I started writing when I was in the very first grade of my elementary school, actually. Once I learned the alphabet, I started to write something. And the surprising thing is that my mom still kept all those writings. So I have all those memories with my mom. But officially, as a playwright, I started writing plays when I entered the faculty of Performing Arts in the University of Tehran, about 30 years ago. That was the very starting point of writing, officially, for stage.
When you were a young person, did you see a lot of theatre? How did you discover the theatre?
Yeah, actually. My father was an engineer, but at the same time, he was very fond of theater. So I remember when I was a high school girl, there was a weekly plan to go and find theater. And you know, Tehran–the capital of Iran–is a very cultural city. And so you could–and you still can–find lots of choices for theatergoers and theater lovers. So I think I owe my father for falling in love with theater.
And that is why when I was a high school girl, I decided to choose theater as my major. I was kind of wondering whether acting or playwriting would be my main choice, but after entering the university, I understood that playwriting is what I really wanted, and I really wanted to dedicate my whole life to that.
Was there something specific about the stage that captured your attention, as opposed to writing novels, or some other kind of artistic expression?
When I was a young girl, I was thinking about writing novels, short stories, and even writing for cinema. In the theater…I was so hooked by what was happening on the stage. It felt like a really magical interaction between audience and the actors. So I think that was the very first thing that made me crazy about theater. That was the main hook by which I was captured [and inspired me] to tell my stories in the form of a play.
Afterward, I was swinging in between theater and cinema, writing for theater and writing for cinema. And I’m still known as a scriptwriter, as well, in my own country. But my favorite way of storytelling is writing a play.
When you create a play, you create literature. I don’t feel exactly the same for cinema. Whenever I write a script, I feel that I’m writing something for a director, for actors, for technicians. But in theater, I feel that I am part of literature, part of the history of literature.
You’ve lived in the U.S. for several years, and have spent many more living in Iran and other places. How is theater similar in the US and Iran and the UK, and other places you’ve lived? How is it different?
It’s exactly five years and one month ago that I moved to the United States. But before that, I had some residences in various countries around the world, like Japan, India, Germany, some other European countries–France, England. So I had this opportunity to travel around the world and live in some specific places for a longer time. So for example, I lived in Japan for over six months, or in the UK over two, three months. So that was a great opportunity, first of all, for being more familiar with other cultures, and then for being familiar with the theater of other countries. Surprisingly, there are many commonalities and similarities between countries, in terms of theater. The main thing, I feel, is that the process is the same. All over the world, there is a playwright, there is a play. Everything starts with a play. There is a director, there are some actors, and then they all gather to make something on stage. And then they interact with the audience [in order] to affect the audience’s mind and body and life. So this is the same all over the world.
Talking about differences, I would say the process of rehearsal is different from country to country. So, for example, in Iran you can find some projects where they work on a play in rehearsal for over six months, and then they go on a stage for just one month. But in the US, it’s not the same. In my experience, we rehearse for about one month and then we start the show, which is too short for me.
And of course, sometimes themes, subjects, and even sometimes the method of acting and the method of directing are different from country to country.
Let’s talk a little bit about Freehold and your Playwriting class. Who are you looking for to take this class? Are you looking for people who have some playwriting experience, people who have no playwriting experience? What kind of student would most benefit from your class?
Beautiful question. I want people who love theater–first–and then people who have a story to tell. I think these are two main features that I’m looking for in the people who attend the class. So for me, it doesn’t matter if they had any playwriting experience or not. For me, it doesn’t matter if they have any experience in theater in general or not. You know, I’m just looking for people who are in love with theater, because I think this is the very first step of entering the theater world. Just love theater. Just be excited about theater. And then have a story to tell.
In class, I will start from the very basics. I will start from creative writing exercises, which are kind of playful, and at the same time, very effective. And then step by step, we will enter the world of playwriting. So, there is no fear for the people who didn’t have any experience specifically in writing for stage.
There are eight sessions altogether, and for the three session sessions, we just work a little bit on creative writing, just to open your mind and just give you the self confidence of writing. Then maybe from session three forward, we will bring up your idea, and will start to talk about that in group sessions–in hopefully dynamic, trustworthy group sessions–to see what the capacity is of your idea. Then we work on characterization, which is, I think, the main step to see how your idea can form as a dramatic narrative. Then we talk about the structure of a play. And then the last two or three sessions would be just for drafting and redrafting, writing and rewriting. So my goal is that the students leave the class at the very end of eight weeks with a 10 minute play in their hand, and hopefully the very last session would be just for reading the plays and getting feedback from me and from other peers.
As a playwright, what is for you the most difficult part of writing a play? What is the most enjoyable part?
Yeah, I think that the main interesting and exciting part is that I know that there is no one way for writing a play. There are 1000 ways. We know that the official history of playwriting is about 2500 years, which is a lot. But still, there are many, many new ways that need to be discovered. So I think that is the main interesting and the main joyful part, the main satisfying part for me as a playwright: to find a new way of telling my story as a play. So discovering new forms–new structures–is the main joy for me.
The second joy is to just create some characters and let them talk. If your play has two characters, it means that your play has three characters, because the playwright is always a hidden character of a play. So whenever I let them talk through my play, I am part of their dialog, but I’m hidden. So just creating all these things and putting them all together is part of the very joyful process of playwriting.
And then the very last thing is that I don’t start writing a play with a statement. I start writing a play with a question. So I write about something that I’m not sure about. I write about something that I’m still a little bit doubtful about the answer to. So writing a play is a way to share my questions, my feelings and my emotions with the audience. I’m not going to tell–I’m not a politician. The main difference between a politician and a playwright, or a writer in general, is that a politician has a strict statement while the playwright starts with a question. So I always love to share my questions with the audience and see their reaction.
You recently directed English at Arts West, which sold out its run. Do you have any works coming out that you’d like to share with us?
So first of all, I would like to say that I started to direct plays in the US. So, for this reason, I’m very thankful for the theater practitioners in the US who gave me this chance to experience directing as well.
We will have a play reading at ACT Theatre in November. It is produced by Seda Iranian Ensemble Theatre, which I co-founded. My other co-founder, Parmida Ziaei, will direct that play. I wrote the play, which is called Home. And the other upcoming project would be a monolog I wrote, which is called Where is Here, which is about immigration, in a comic tone. We will stage that play in January, at Seattle Public Theater.
Anything else you’d like to add?
The very last thing I would like to add is that I have about 20 years experience of teaching playwriting. But you know, this is a new challenge for me, because most of my experiences were in different countries–mostly in Iran, and then in other countries, like Japan or the UK, or some other countries. In Iran, obviously, the language of instruction was Farsi, which is my native language, and was the easiest. But in Japan, for example–every year I go to Japan to teach in the University of Tokyo (I teach script writing there) and I have a translator with me all the time in the class. Every day, for about seven hours, there is a translator who accompanies me to translate my words to Japanese. In the other countries, English was the main language of teaching. But you know, in most of the countries, like Germany or France, if I had a workshop or if I had a class or if I had a talk, English was our second language, both for me and for the students or the audience. But it is challenging here in the US to teach in English to students whose first language is English, while it’s my second language. So I think it is challenging, and I am very, very ready to experience this challenge.
Playwriting meets Saturdays, September 21 through November 9, from 10AM-1PM. Register today!
