"To practice any art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow,” wrote Kurt Vonnegut. And what a profoundly soul-enriching time it has been for actress Marjan Neshat.
Over a six month period, which began last November, Nashat is starring in three Off Broadway plays that have generated serious buzz. First there was Sylvia Khoury’s Selling Kabul at Playwrights Horizons. Until March 20, she stars in English by Sanaz Toossi at the Atlantic Theater Company. And next month she is back at Playwrights Horizons in Sanaz Toossi's Wish You Were Here.
All the plays, which were written by Middle Eastern playwrights, take place in the middle east. Avoiding stereotypes they spotlight what it’s like to be human with desires, joys, struggles and dreams. “They are all brilliantly written plays populated with rich and complex women. They all put middle-eastern women onstage without “other-izing” them,” says Neshat who is known for her television work on New Amsterdam, For Life, Bull, Elementary, Quantico, Law & Order SVU, and Fringe. “Selling Kabul and Wish You Were Here are both unaccented. They respect the fact that these characters are speaking in their own language, which here translates to American English.”
For Neshat, who was born in Tehran, Iran and emigrated to the United States when she was a child, the plays are deeply personal. “These roles are everything I have dreamed of wanting to bring to life,” she adds. “I feel a profound pride to be able to use all my artistic intuition while pulling on my family, the inherent DNA in my bones that is both Eastern, immigrant and most of all, human.”
Jeryl Brunner: Can you share how you left Tehran when you were a child?
Marjan Neshat: We left in 1984. I have an older sister who had started to witness and experience some pretty frightening things. My mom, sister and I flew to Holland where we had a family friend. From there we tried to get a visitor’s visa to come to Seattle where my uncle was living. My mom always says the immigration officer looked at her and her two girls with a kind of knowingness, suggesting that he knew she was not trying for a “visit.”She says she looked at him square in the face and communicated that our life hung in the balance of his decision. And he happened to look kindly on her.
Brunner: When did you know that you had to be an artist?
Neshat: The longing started very early but I was a shy, quiet, immigrant kid without any natural path to that. There were no drama camps in my childhood life. But by the time I was 12 there was a romantic notion of it which had started to bloom in my mind. I did my first play when I was 14. I had my first kiss on stage. It was the first time in my life I can recall feeling like I was not on the outside, that I was part of something. I have never really wanted to do anything else since.
Brunner: What went through your mind when you heard about English, which takes place in a TOEFL classroom in Karaj, Iran in 2008, and you would be playing the teacher, Marjan?
Neshat: At first I was just shocked that I was going to play a character with my same name. But I think a TOEFL class is such a rich premise for a play. Language and the way we speak have so much to do with our identity and how we move through the world. I think the play so beautifully examines the cross-section between those two things.
Brunner: In some ways, I see Marjan as the soul of English. What qualities does she have that you adore?
Neshat: I do adore her and I deeply feel for her predicament. So often our ideas about ourselves and our potential and what makes us feel alive don’t align so conveniently with our realities. But she never gives up her attempt to try and inspire and to question her own place in things.
Brunner: In English, what a fascinating and great choice to speak unaccented English to mark when your characters are speaking Farsi.
Neshat: I think it’s such a brilliant choice because it speaks to the heart of the play. When you speak your mother tongue you are somehow most yourself. And this is also true for the actors in the play: Our unaccented English is the language we are most facile with. It also connects us so much more to the audience rather than having subtitles. I think when people hear an accent, they instantly distance themselves. So I love the fact that the audience gets to see and hear us in a language they relate to.
Brunner: Is there something you wish you could tell your character, Marjan in English? It’s been a journey for her living abroad and then returning to Iran.
Neshat: Very interesting question. There is such a fissure in her soul about where she is and where she belongs that causes her a real sorrow. Also, there is some tricky internal racism that if we were analyzing objectively we could point out. But honestly, her complicated, romantic sorrow is part of what makes her so juicy to play.
