A voice becomes an image

A theatre text under changed conditions

Rabihavi says he wrote the work for theatre, then adapted it to video when quarantine changed the conditions of performance. The source connects Motherly with the suppression of protests in November 2019 and the work of nurses during the pandemic. A mother’s voice recalls a child who went to help an injured person. Source 1

What a voice leaves open

The nurse’s gender is deliberately left unspecified. Rabihavi explains that the text allows the audience to imagine the child through the mother’s words, while questioning the certainty of that image. Sousan Farrokhnia reads the text; her voice carries a family that is only partly seen. Source 1

The collaboration behind the screen

Rabihavi credits Ethan Jahan with more than editing. Jahan helped select and develop images, worked on the visual ideas and contributed to production. The interview therefore provides a useful account of several kinds of creative labour, rather than a single undifferentiated directing credit. Source 1

Their discussion of red fabric and flowers shows how an image can carry both vitality and loss. Rabihavi also recalls earlier art-video work with Kaveh Golestan. That recollection supplies a history of collaboration, without making every later film the same project. Source 1

Music and the possibility of hope

Asked about Beethoven beside the Iranian images, Rabihavi explains that he wanted music that would interrupt a familiar expectation of mourning. He connects the choice with an affirmation of joy and with the composer’s 250th anniversary in 2020. The mother’s imagined conversation with the lost child is intended to carry hope as well as grief. Source 1

The nurse and the household

The fictional nurse is off duty when they encounter an injured protester. Against the mother’s plea to stay away, professional conscience leads the nurse to help; the nurse is then killed. Rabihavi describes an uncle active in teachers’ rights who appears visually rather than through spoken dialogue. These details establish a household shaped by care and civic responsibility. Source 1

The rose belongs to the visual language of the work: its rapid opening and collapse suggest vitality and death. The mother’s imagined washing of her lost child’s clothes keeps an ordinary act of care alive after the person has gone. Rabihavi also describes an imagined visit to a grave with wine. These are interpretations of the dramatic and filmed work, rather than events in his own family history. Source 1

Sources & credits

1. Kayhan London · Motherly in a virtual world

   Unsigned Persian interview, 3 May 2020. Rabihavi explains the theatre text, its video adaptation and the collaborators’ different contributions.