ASSINIBOIA - The Assiniboia and District Arts Council brought in MOTUS O’s production “Prisoner of Tehran” at the Prince of Wales Centre on April 4. MOTUS O, in collaboration with Marina Nemat put together a production that is a mix of spoken word, movement, video and music that tells the story of Marina’s memoir of the same name, Prisoner of Tehran.
MOTUS O, co-founded by Jack Langenhuizen, Cynthia Croker and James Croker, is a Dance Theater in Mount Forest, Ontario. They have put on over 25 full length productions since 1990, and each have over 30 years of experience in dance and other artistic disciplines. MOTUS O is Latin for “method of movement”, and in their words “we want to know the meaning of every movement and to move as if it has meaning”. Over nine years ago, Jack, Cynthia and James met Marina Nemat at a conference about the Arts in Education where they heard Marina give a presentation on her story. They were so deeply moved by her story that they contacted Marina with the idea of collaborating her story with movement.
This collaboration of spoken word, video, music and movement brings a brilliant and well put together version of the telling of a story that is truly captivating, heart breaking, but most importantly - inspirational. Jack Langenhuizen and James Croker play roles in the production themselves along with dancers Emily Redford and Petra Blenkhorne. Cynthia Croker takes on the role of Marina in this version of the production, but in the early days of touring this show, Marina herself would take on the narrator role, being part of the production while telling her very own story. The dancers all move together beautifully as ‘Marina’ narrates and moves with the dancers throughout the production. Marina wears a bright red dress and head scarf and stands out amongst the dancers dressed in black. You can’t help but focus intensely on the narrator as she tells Marina’s heart wrenching story.
Prisoner of Tehran, was a memoir written by Marina Nemat, and tells the story of when she was a young girl in Tehran, Iran. The story begins by Marina describing growing up in a Russian Orthodox family in the early days in Tehran, when there was freedom. When women could dress freely, when western music and literature were still legal and enjoyed by everyone. When there was happiness and laughter. Marina describes her childhood home, her family – who were descendants of the wave of Russians who fled to Iran during the Russian Revolution of 1917. She tells you of her mother, who was a hairdresser and ran a salon, and of her father, who ran a dance studio and taught ballroom dancing. She reminisces about laughing and playing with her friends, going to church and school and reading books, and spending time by the Caspian Sea.
When Marina was in high school, the Shah of Iran was overthrown by the Islamic Revolutionaries, and overnight the country became a repressive and punitive state run on fundamentalist Islamic principles. People start disappearing and fear took over. Marina was arrested on January 15th 1982 at the age of 16 during the early days of Ayatollah Khomeini’s brutal Islamic Revolution and was held prisoner at Evin, a political prison in Tehran. Marina was held at Evin for two years, during which time she was brutally beaten and tortured, sentenced to death for political crimes and came close to execution. She was saved by her interrogator, Ali, and sentenced to life in prison instead. He forces her to marry him, in which time he stripped her of her Christian faith and name and forced her to follow Islamic ways, and if she didn’t, he threatened to harm her family and friends. The story continues and tells of her life in these two years, the friends she made in prison, and the friends she lost. She tells of her time with Ali’s family, who were kind to her and took her in like one of their own, and the relationships she made with them despite her circumstance. And near the end, she tells you of Ali’s assassination, and how his last dying wish was to return Marina to her family. And they did.
Marina was released from her life sentence at Evin and returned to her family, where she eventually marries the love of her life, Andre. The Nemats are finally able to get to Canada in 1991 where they settle in Toronto, Ontario. Marina’s memoir was published in 2007 by Penguin Canada and has been published in 28 other countries and is an International bestseller. Her memoir is many things, but in the end the biggest takeaway is the Marina was still able to hold space for forgiveness, and most of all HOPE.
At the end of the production, Jack and Cynthia hosted a Q&A where they answered many questions on both Marina’s story, and the story of MOTUS O. The Assiniboia and District Arts Council hosted this production in Assiniboia and had over 38 attendees for the production. This was their last performing arts production of the season and were very pleased with the turnout. This was MOTUS O’s last tour of this production, Prisoner of Tehran, with almost 9 years of performing the show.
