Shahrokh Yadegari will discuss the stage production of The Scarlet Stone that he composed and directed a few years ago.  The Scarlet Stone is based on the story of “Rostam and Sohrab” in Abolqasem Ferdowsi’s Shāhnāmeh and Mohre-ye Sorkh, the last work of the contemporary Iranian poet, Siavash Kasrai. Both stories are engaged with the political history of Iran; one recounts a very ancient history in the form of mythology, and the other grapples with certain key events since the 1979 Iranian Revolution in modern poetic form. In Yadegari’s presentation we will discuss the artistic, technological, and sociopolitical aspect of the piece.

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The Scarlet Stone is a multidisciplinary and collaborative music/dance/animation work told in the language of dance-theatre. The piece uses the modern rendition of the ancient Persian mythology by Kasrai to portray the current struggle of the people of Iran, especially those of the youth and women, in their brave quest for freedom and democracy. As an artist of the Iranian diaspora, Yadegari’s goal was to make this piece directly relevant to the current political and social climate of Iran.

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Using advanced interactive and theatrical audio-visual technologies and juxtaposing the classical and “new” Persian poetry, The Scarlet Stone has been conceived to be a contemporary presentation of an ancient art form with modern aesthetics. Great care has been taken to stay committed to important principles of naqqāli and not allow technological design elements to usurp the traditional forms, while at the same time not allowing traditional values to impose a nostalgic quality over the modern and technological elements of the piece.

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Yadegari, composer, sound designer, and producer, has collaborated with such artists as Peter Sellars, Robert Woodruff, Ann Hamilton, Christine Brewer, Gabor Tompa, Maya Beiser, Steven Schick, Lucie Tiberghien, Shahrokh Moshkin Ghalam, Hossein Omoumi, and Siamak Shajarian. He has performed and his productions, compositions, and designs have been presented internationally in such venues as the Carnegie Hall, Royce Hall, Festival of Arts and Ideas, OFF-D’Avignon Festival, International Theatre Festival in Cluj Romania, Ravinia Festival, Ruhr-Triennale, Vienna Festival, Holland Festival, Tirgan Festival, Forum Barcelona, Japan America Theatre, The Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts, the International Computer Music Conference (ICMC), the Institut fur Neue Musik und Musikerziehung (Darmstadt), Judah L. Magnes Museum in Berkeley, and Contemporary Museum of Art, San Diego.

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Yadegari holds a BS in Electrical Engineering from Purdue University, a Master’s in Media Arts and Sciences from MIT’s Media Lab, and a Ph.D. in music from University of California, San Diego. He worked as a unix kernel programmer at such companies as Interactive Systems Corporation, Sun Microsystems, and ICL Inc. He has also worked at Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique (IRCAM), and is one of the founders and the artistic director of Kereshmeh Records and Persian Arts Society, organizations dedicated to the preservation and dissemination of Persian traditional and new music. Yadegari is currently on the faculty of the department of Music at UC San Diego, and the director of the Sonic Arts Research and Development group and the Initiative for Digital Exploration of Arts and Sciences (IDEAS) at the Qualcomm Institute (UCSD’s branch of California Institute for Telecommunication and Information Technology).

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For more about Shahrokh Yadegari, click HERE.