Profs. George Belliveau and Marvin Westwood on ‘A Smoke Behind the Rope’

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/08/16

*Sky Theatre Group YouTube video interivew uploaded.*

Professor George Belliveau specializes in Theatre Education where he integrates theatre as a form of research and artistic expression across multiple disciplines. He is an international leader in research-based theatre, and has shared his performative approach to research in numerous countries around the world. His co-edited book Research-based as Methodology(Intellect, 2016) establishes the complexity and richness of this emerging field of artistic research. His most recent project Contact! Unload, a research-based play about the stress injuries that soldiers suffer post-deployment, has been shared nationally and internationally, including a private showing for Prince Harry, a soldier himself and advocate for men’s mental health. His arts-based approach to research has been successfully funded by CIHR, SSHRC, Movember, among other sources.

Marvin “Marv” Westwood is Professor Emeritus of Counselling Psychology, in Educational & Counselling Psychology, and Special Education at the University of British Columbia. He currently has a post-retirement appointment to the Faculty of Education.  His major areas of teaching and research focused on development, teaching and delivery of group-based approaches for counselling clients, and men’s psychological health. He developed the UBC Veterans Transition Program to help promote recovery from war related stress injuries for which he received both the Queen’s Golden and Diamond Jubilee Medals in 2005 and 2013. In 2012 he established the Centre for Group Counselling and Trauma (currently he’s Senior Consultant to the Centre).

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A Smoke Behind the Rope 

Written and directed by Rzgar Hama 

Two young people face torture and death on the longest, darkest night of their lives. 

Set in a high-security prison, “A Smoke Behind the Rope” follows the connection that blooms between Golnaz and Farhad on a night that they fear will end in death. What follows is a poetic dance of story, memory, imagination and passion in the face of oppression. 

Golnaz and Farhad, accidental activists, find themselves in solitary confinement in a prison famous for torture and mysterious disappearances. Imagination and a powerful need for connection allow these two young strangers to find ways to share their pain, joy, fear, and humour in an environment of great uncertainty and profound paranoia. Stories of resistance are etched on the prison walls, a powerful reminder of the struggles and injustices those who resist authoritarian systems face. 

“We are thrilled to bring ‘A Smoke behind the Rope’ to the stage and share the powerful stories of these two political prisoners with audiences,” said Rzgar Hama, the playwright and director of the production. “Coming from a Kurdish background, I was exposed to accounts of political detainees and executions from a young age. The experience hit particularly closer when my brother narrowly escaped being hanged,” he said. 

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Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Okay, so today, we are here with George and Marv, who had the opportunity to see “A Smoke Behind the Rope.” So, what were your first impressions in watching the play? 

Professor George Belliveau: Well, I had the opportunity to see a few scenes before I saw the production in the theatre. I read a little bit of the script. So, I came in with some prior knowledge of the content. I come to the work from a research-based theatre lens, which resonates with Rzgar’s work. It is theatre based on either documented history, interviews, etc. In this play (A Smoke Behind the Rope), Rzgar drew from artifacts that he could glean, as well as a lot from memory and what he’s heard, which lends itself quite nicely to the theatre because then it moves us to the imagination. So, bringing a so-called research-based theatre approach into a formal theatre space … if I think of going to that space in Yaletown (where Rzgar’s play was performed) … I think of the theatre experience right from the get-go … as you walk into a space.

First, you’re around the streets in that affluent (Yaletown) area, with everyone drinking $7 coffees and $12 juices. There’s affluence. There’s freedom. Then you walk into the community center, a lovely, dynamic, diverse space with basketball courts and diverse folks playing basketball. Then we walk into this ominous lobby space that could be a holding ground … for something. Trains us to shifted in this space. It’s cold, with cement floors and big walls. I then felt this transition, as you had to go through a small entrance to get into the theatre space. So, that whole journey was the beginning of “we’re going to visit a couple of cells in some ways, but the world constantly exists outside.” I’ll stop there so Marv can jump in.

Professor Marvin Westwood: Thanks, George. This parallels what I’m saying. You need someone or some event to induct us into the depths of darkness where we see these two people. Second, the screen set for me was too white. It didn’t look messy enough. It was as if they were wanted the darkness to come into the psychic self by just being there. “Oh my gosh,” just being there, this doom base is haunting. That’s the second thing. The other thing I would add is about the performers: Wouldn’t it be great if the performers could be actors who were from an oppressed regime where they lived or knew this experience more intimately? These were very skilled actors, but they didn’t grow up in that region, did they?

Jacobsen: Not as far as I know.

Westwood: No, they performed very well, but again, this might be my prejudice. If they spoke in accented English, it would feel even more real. This is going on. At the end, I noted after the play that it was very well prepared and directed, being very action-oriented with a lot of movement, expression, and intonation. It was exceptionally well done.

When people are like caged animals, they go from joy to fear to whatever and smash down the walls symbolically. in the audience, and I have been there. 

The impact of this play on me was the following.”

My recommendation for this play is to have Rzgar come on to the stage and speaking to the audience he would contextualizes it for us – the audience. This would add validation, because in Canada, yes we have prisons; if you’ve ever worked in them, you know what they’re like. But most people are assumed innocent, until proven guilty, whereas, in these regimes, they’re guilty until they’re killed!

In addition, at the end of the play, it would be very impressive if the two actors stood up after the play, and were then joined by two other people coming on stage and briefly speaking to us. These two have been people invited to speak as they had lived through in real life, similar experiences and comment briefly: “I was with you. I was

It would be uplifting and powerful for the audience if there were a voice by two other people from those regimes who could attest to this. In Canada, it’s very valuable for someone who’s lived there when we watch a theatre piece. They’ve let us into their worlds. That’s all I would say. The beginning and the ending should be contextualized more. 

Belliveau: Yes. Building on what Marv is saying, there are several things you shared. Research-based theatre, as we (our UBC Lab) conceptualizes it, constantly evolves and emerges. One of the principles we use is a three-act structure. As Marv mentioned, the first act is an introduction to the context, whether by someone with lived experience or someone who has studied it … to immerse the audience into this genre of theatre gently.

The second act is the play, which takes the most time to generate, create, write, and perform. The third act is how we leave the audience, leaving the theatre with certain thoughts about the context. This is usually curated with someone leading a discussion or commenting on their lived experience.

Not everyone necessarily likes this model of research-based theatre because it sounds very academic. Given the context, there’s a sense that you have to prepare the audience. They can’t just walk in and take it in, like when they see a film. The choice to do this can be one way or a combination. Marv is speaking to the ethos of research-based theatre, which allows more opportunities for people to understand that this is a real context, followed by something fictional based on that.

In that three-act structure, sometimes, the constraint for theatre-makers is that they want to only show … and not the telling at the beginning and end. But Marv and I believe in ethically preparing the audience and checking in with them with a post-performance discussion. The formal theatre world sometimes operates differently from Research-based Theatre, and Rzgar’s company is potentially moving more toward theatre rather than research-based theatre. That’s how I saw it. 

Jacobsen: Go ahead.

Westwood: Scott, when you mentioned the serious nature of the play about people being killed, is that true?

Jacobsen: As far as my conversations with Rzgar, there are contexts in which people are transitioned from prisons to be killed at some point.

Westwood: But, George, wouldn’t that be part of their dialogue in the script? “You know you’re going to die.” “I know I’m going to die.” Let’s just blow this place, whatever, I didn’t hear the threat of death. 

Belliveau: That would add to the dramaturgy, letting the audience know there’s this weight at all times. It’s the human thing, is that we all know that we’re going to die, and many of us try to think that we’re going to live until 150. Marv … you might with your health and balanced lifestyle. 

Westwood: Yeah, right.

Belliveau: Sprightly young man. But it got edited out, Marv. You can be more explicit when discussing the intro and outro, but let the theatre piece be. It’d be good, Marv, when you mentioned the physicality. I thought that was one of the strengths of the piece, even though it was white and dreamy in some ways. The possibilities … they sucked out the marrow of what was possible within that. They tried not to paint the bleakness … and instead to say, “We’ve only got 10 hours. Let’s be as positive as we can.” The freedom of the body was great … because I’ve seen many plays based on research where it’s very talk, talk, talk, talk, and text, text, text! Translating those emotions into the body is hard, but there were no issues here. The chemistry between Rzgar’s direction, the text, and the actors invited this space. The actors used the whole space.

They expanded the possibilities, and that’s a credit to their artistic choices: “Let’s not be beaten down by the system.” Despite knowing there was no hope, we were reminded of the sounds of other people being taken out of their cells. Rzgar should take credit for their animation, activation, and life force, which reestablished that this is a tragedy. This play is a tragedy.

Like any of the early Shakespearean plays, it comes across as what could have been versus what is. The characters are fighting and held down, yet they have such stamina and life in them, which makes them more tragic. He’s accomplished that, and that’s what hit me so strongly.

It’s an enormously valuable play … for theatre and research. This regime (represented within the play) represents one of many regimes today, and this is probably going on somewhere right now. It’s extremely relevant in Canada because we tend to go to sleep on these things (unaware) due to our (established) legal system and concept of justice, although not always perfect. People (we) need to be shaken up to realize that people (around the world) are being wiped out in silence. That’s his (rich) artistic and political contribution to this country as a newcomer, as a new Canadian. 

Westwood: The play depicts the lived experiences of humans. He’s almost there. But he needs to appear because he’s a dynamic, sincere, committed guy or his equivalent,

What happens to people in contexts of war, in contexts of confinement?

Jacobsen: Yes. What happens psychologically?

Westwood: Yes. Psychologically, they develop behaviour indicative of post-traumatic stress syndrome, impulsive acute depression, suicidality, helplessness, and acting out of desperation. Clinically, they would probably exhibit these symptoms. I don’t know how long they’re in there. The way they were acting made it seem like they had just arrived. They were much more animated than those we’ve worked with who have been held hostage. By the time they’re released, they’re lazy and almost dead.

Rzgar somehow conveys that this couple is hopeful. Their animation was healthy. You saw it. They could move, rotate, and jump, almost like they had ballet training or something. His introduction would change all that and show that this is one desperate last attempt to feel life and enjoy life. They could put that in the script.

But what happens to people is that the idea is to break them, they become comatose, never resist again, and walk head down to their death penalty because it’s more convenient for the oppressors. They don’t fight anymore. Isolation, Scott, is one of the ways you kill people. You isolate them psychologically and kill them emotionally, and the greatest punishment for any human is to isolate them from the collective. We visited those sites if they were in separate rooms or cells, like when we were in Dachau in Germany. They were intentional.

Make a small room and then never let them have contact. Eventually, they’ll collapse, not because they’re being beaten.

They don’t have to beat them. Isolation kills humans. So that’s my answer. The play is refreshingly possible to be different. 

Jacobsen: George, when it comes to characterizing this in terms of a play, especially with a research background in plays, how do you coach and find actors to portray this effectively?

Belliveau: Well, that’s a good question. As Marv said, knowing that reality, of course, to play that on stage would be so hard on the audience that there would be very few moments they could tolerate. We have seen films that almost torture the mind. Certainly, playwrights, especially in the thirties and forties, explored the theatre of pain, of cruelty, like Artaud and other playwrights. 

But usually, productions try to flip it (pain to hope). Rzgar almost flips exactly what Marv was saying, showing a moment of defiance. I kept thinking about the play … due to the prisoners being beaten down … maybe only 5% of them (or 5% of their energy) dreamed of bursting out. The oppression of isolation is so strong it nearly wipes them out … but in a dream state (where the play exists) … that 5% of possibility is what we see – the hope, defiance.

The characters could be lying down … and in the play we see what they would like to do in their imagination (they are so physically and emotionally beaten that most of them would be lying down most of the time). I saw the play almost in that state, showing what was possible … but the reality was that they were slugging around, confined, barely able to hear the person next to them. But that 5% in their imagination, which was white and clean, not dirty and smelling of urine, was protected by Rzgar, showing hope, resistance of defeat. 

Does one make that explicit, or must the audience take it in? Because it is quite a contrast between the reality these folks might be experiencing and the physicality we see. 

Westwood: The text was bleak at times, although hopeful. To close, where George is triggered, is why I felt hope in the dark space of despair, symbolically, they smashed the wall between them. Notice that they come alive when they connect and make a human connection.

It’s a very powerful subliminal message. You can do a lot as soon as you have one other person with you. It brings you back to life. That’s why they separate them, so they don’t connect.

That was very clever. They couldn’t be doing all that if they were alone. The play was about the interaction. If you want to do a play about someone in a cell who’s in deprivation, they have done that, but it doesn’t look like that. There’s no action. They came back to life because the wall was broken.

As a psychologist, you always want to be in connection, even in the darkest times. Working with soldiers, it doesn’t matter how they’re being shot up, but if you’re all in there together, talking and struggling, you have a better chance of getting out and living longer. So that’s it. I appreciate having seen it, and you can see I get activated talking about it.

He’s made a tremendous contribution that he can make here in North America to the reality happening in so many places worldwide. It’s quite universal. 

Jacobsen: George, any final words?

Belliveau: Yes. That’s a great observation, Marv. The release happens in the communication between the two, and the play does that beautifully. There’s a release when they have hope of communication. She gets to speak to her parents through him. He gets to communicate with a girl he was interested in but never acted upon it. They enter each other’s stories of trauma, supporting one another. The fourth wall is broken, and the cells are exploded. The power of those moments was in the other person being there to witness and create space for release before they went to execution.

There was a sense of being cleansed. They were always there to support one another. The dynamic between the two is an act of resistance. 

Westwood: Thank you, Rzgar, for persisting in doing this.

Jacobsen: Excellent. Thank you so much, guys. Appreciate it.

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Resources for “A Smoke Behind the Rope”:

https://www.facebook.com/kurdishhouse.canadavancouver/videos/2537958909739125

https://www.facebook.com/rzgar.hamarashed/videos/486716747342676

https://www.facebook.com/rzgar.hamarashed/videos/2769813146502616

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