Rosemer’s Syndrome

The jury's
conclusion

Iranian theatre director and actor Davoud Zare takes up one of the darkest plays of Ibsen’s heritage (Rosmersholm) and theoretical views of Guy Debord, Timothy Snyder and Giorgio Agamben, and is working on a new adaptation where he brings to light the conservative (Dr Krøll) and liberal (Mortensgaard) forces and their desired strategic alliance to the clergyman (John Rosmer). Zare claims that “Rosmersholm is no longer a place, but a situation”. The situation that prompts Rosmer not to sacrifice his life, but adapt to the reality where roles and missions are intertwined, as they all have become part of the “spectacle” and “democracy show”. “The decline of a nation is much more tragic than a death of the main character”. The jury is intrigued by such a reading of the play. Zare deconstructs the original play and builds his adaptation as a series of narrations. The narrator - Brendel, “an historic conscience who is witnessing the decline of a nation” - defines the symptoms of the “Rosmer Syndrome” and reflects on obedience, resistance, and solidarity, mechanism of “the spectacle” and how it structures a modern society, freedom and democracy, manipulation and propaganda, what it means to be a responsible member of a society, etc. These philosophical detours are illustrated with dialogues from the original play or dialogues inspired by Ibsen’s texts.

About the project

What we are facing today around the world is the dominance of ‘the society of spectacle’, which diminishes the role of society’s vital parts to a tool that serves ‘the society of spectacle’ as an ideal situation.
As a consequence, democracy is also constantly devaluating as the mere systematic structure which is managing this situation.
This situation on the other hand, is intending to alienate the language, the essential communicative element of human nature, and this is nothing but capturing ‘the common thing’ and the extreme form of it is the spectacle and for this very reason, the spectacle includes something as a positive potentiality which can be used against the spectacle itself.
The effects of such situation on the characters of well-known Rosmersholm has been investigated and based on the audience knowledge of the story, we have sort of recreated it again, in a way that situation is being regularly changed between text-performance and potentiality-action and suggest the audience interaction.
The final result of this process will be a recovering of the present moment.

Davoud Zare. Director, dramaturge, choreographer and performer.
Studied theater at the Art university of Tehran and then continued his studies at ICI-CCN/exerce in France.
He has been working as a freelance artist and collaborator for the last decade in the field of performing arts.