Andy Warhol spent most of his 1976 trip to Iran ordering room service. Brent Askari’s new comedy puts a revolutionary in the room too | Arts-theater

PITTSFIELD — Andy Warhol was fascinated with celebrities and the cult of character that emerged round them. 

The artist, movie director and producer has but to depart the general public consciousness 35 years after his loss of life.  Would he be happy to know the persona he created remains to be swathed in mystique? Nonetheless creating buzz? Has its personal cult of character? 

In the intervening time, Warhol appears to be all over the place.

In March, Netflix launched the brand new documentary sequence, “The Andy Warhol Diaries,” bringing to life the journals and information he started conserving in 1968, shortly after an assassination try by radical feminist author Valerie Solanas. 

In Might, the artist made headlines when considered one of his Marilyn Monroe work, “Shot Sage Blue Marilyn,” turned the costliest work of American artwork ever offered. The portray, considered one of 5 Warhol made in 1964, offered at public sale for $195 million.

He is additionally the topic of a world premiere play, “Andy Warhol in Iran,” working June 2-25, on the St. Germain Stage at Barrington Stage Firm’s Sydelle and Lee Blatt Performing Arts Heart. 

Set in 1976, the play imagines occasions transpiring throughout Warhol’s actual life journey to Tehran. Warhol was invited to Iran by Fereydoun Hoveyda, Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations, to create a portrait of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi’s spouse. Warhol met the Empress Farah Pahlavi, whom he took Polaroids of throughout his go to. He was accompanied by his supervisor Fred Hughes and Bob Colacello, Warhol’s biographer after which editor of Warhol’s Interview Journal.

On the time, the Empress was amassing a serious artwork assortment for the museum she was creating, now the Tehran Museum of Up to date Artwork. Warhol was on the top of his profession creating commissioned portraits of the wealthy and well-known. Past the glitz and glamour and society of the Tehran Warhol was launched to (when he left his resort room) was a rustic seething with political unrest. Warhol would full the commissioned works two years later and was scheduled to unveil them at an arts pageant in Iran. However earlier than the return journey may occur, a violent rebellion, identified at present because the Iranian revolution, would overthrow the Shah and the monarchy. 

“American Underground” playwright Brent Askari’s new one-act comedy imagines Warhol’s 1976 keep in Iran being interrupted by an encounter with a younger revolutionary. It begins with Warhol, in his room on the Royal Tehran Lodge the place he is ordering caviar ($9 for a half a pound) and speaking on the cellphone, or quite, he is addressing the viewers by way of the cellphone (he is most well-liked technique of communication), bringing them in control as to how he is ended up in Iran, of the world as he is aware of it. 

For Askari, this cut-off date was a pivotal one which tuned him into world occasions.  

“I am half Iranian. My father came visiting from Iran. I used to be residing in Austin, Texas, on the time within the 70s as a child and have become conscious of the Iranian revolution as a result of we had a whole lot of kinfolk coming and staying with us,” mentioned Askari throughout a joint  interview over Zoom with actors Henry Stram and Nima Rakhshanifar and director Skip Greer. “I believe my cousins stayed with us for a 12 months and regardless that I used to be fairly younger, it raised the query of what is occurring, what is going on on. It had a huge impact on me at a really impressionable age … All these kinfolk needed to depart their properties and are available stick with us. It led me to need to discover the causes of the revolution.”

As for Warhol, Askari has had a lifelong fascination with the artist. 

“I believe my first encounter was as a fan of the Velvet Underground. There was that first album by them with that iconic cowl of the Warhol banana. I received actually into studying books about him. I turned actually fascinated with The Manufacturing unit. When the concept got here to write down one thing about Iran, this time interval, in remembering that Warhol had come to Iran in 1976, I believed, that is one thing I need to do,” he mentioned. 

The intersection of the early beginnings of the Iranian revolution and Warhol’s go to in 1976 allowed Askari to think about a sequence of occasions through which Warhol (Stram) comes face-to-face with Farhad (Rakhshanifar), an idealistic radical revolutionary. Farhad is there to kidnap Warhol, who he believes will make the world listen to what’s occurring in Iran. Warhol presents him cash as he tries to speak his method out of the scenario. 

“We do not want that now — what we want is publicity. And that’s the place you are available. You see, Mr. Andy Warhol, we wish our quarter-hour of fame.”

Warhol presents him a job in considered one of his films, promising to make him well-known.

“I do not need to be well-known,” Farhad says. An astonished Warhol replies, “However … everybody desires to be well-known.”

What may somebody need greater than fame, Warhol asks, nonetheless oblivious to the world at-large. The Iranian revolution, its beginnings and root causes, are nonetheless an enigma to many Individuals.

“Plenty of the content material of this play is conversations and arguments I’d have with my friends rising up. I grew up with each my mother and father and my grandparents additionally residing in our home. My grandfather is absolutely into poetry and a whole lot of Iranian tradition is handed all the way down to me. I used to be born right here, so it felt prefer it was my accountability to share this info with my friends rising up in America and having these robust conversations,” Rakhshanifar mentioned. “In order that’s one thing about this play that actually spoke to me and I am thrilled to have this chance to structure a few of this Iranian historical past for audiences and to have the ability to fill in a few of these gaps.”

Stram, who lately appeared on HBO’s “Gilded Age” and directed BSC’s “Eleanor” final summer time, wished to be a part of the play from his first studying of the script.

“I fell in love with the play once I learn it, which is so uncommon for me,” Stram mentioned. “I discovered it so compelling that I wished to audition.”

Crafting a model of Warhol for the stage is more difficult than simply placing on considered one of his iconic wigs, he mentioned. 

“I’ve at all times been conscious of Andy Warhol, however till this challenge got here up, I hadn’t been very tuned into him,” Stram mentioned. “Proper now’s a very wealthy time to seek out stuff about him. There’s that unbelievable documentary in regards to the diaries that’s on Netflix. There is a actually stunning profound present on the Brooklyn Museum in regards to the connection to his faith, his household, his churchgoing habits and his non secular life. It simply led me to a lot analysis …” 

Stram discovered he may be taught absolutely anything about Warhol, watching video clip after video clip, through which Warhol reveals issues like his favourite TV present (“I Dream of Jeannie”). However, Stram mentioned, there comes a degree when it’s a must to cease the analysis and “discover the particular person behind the have an effect on.”

“It is sort of startling how restricted in a sure method that have an effect on was — in the way in which he spoke, in the way in which he averted emotion, the flatness of the supply,” Stram mentioned. “That could not be sustained for an hour and a half. You have to discover a approach to modulate that. You have to discover a approach to translate the have an effect on so it will get communicated to an viewers.”

Geer described the play as “an attractive piece that grabs your guts. It’s extremely humorous but it surely additionally simply flows from web page to web page.”

“As a child, a part of what received me by life was the notion that every part is gorgeous. This concept that every part is gorgeous is a continuing mantra that helps me by the robust occasions,” he mentioned. “So, I used to be instantly drawn to what I understood of Andy Warhol due to that. The opposite factor that I’ve realized in my grownup years, I’ve at all times been fascinated by the sensible software of philosophy and politics when it comes all the way down to human beings … Taking these two issues collectively and placing them on this play, it was an amazing departure half for me and I used to be very to see what was going to occur on this interplay. 

Stram added that he appreciates the characters, particularly Warhol, are allowed to be taught because the play strikes ahead.

“I believe one of many stunning issues about this play, that hopefully by the top the sort of aphoristic clever cracks Andy makes about artwork and every part else are earned and also you see that its a really deep factor he is saying,” he mentioned. “That it isn’t simply, ‘Every part is that this’ and Every part is that.’ It isn’t that straightforward. This play permits a human interplay to fill within the lacking items of Andy’s considering and also you see how deeply he believes it and the way he learns one thing about his personal convictions by Farhad and thru this interplay.”