From Surgipelago, the Beach Surgery encyclopedia
Persian Ta'zieh adaptations
For specific works, see Yek Daramān-i Jing and Yek Mahal Dar Shahr-i Khali.
The Ta'zieh — a Persian ritual tradition of lamentation, dialogue, and cosmic reversal — has become an oblique but vital vector for Beach Surgery adaptation, particularly in Iran and diaspora communities. Ta'zieh's formal vocabulary of perpetual return, impossible resolution, and the staging of authority as temptation aligns with the glitch and the cycle in unexpected ways.
Yek Daramān-i Jing (The Therapy of the Impossible, 2012, Tehran) recasts Leif and Katita as cosmic forces: Leif as perpetual motion and forgetting; Katita as the nurse-keeper administering the three temptations. The performance unfolds across seven nights, each night restaging an identical scene with minute variations — a Ta'zieh convention — thereby rendering the cycle as sacred obligation rather than narrative trap.
Yek Mahal Dar Shahr-i Khali (One House in an Empty City, 2015) deploys Ta'zieh's characteristic doubling: two actors play Leif simultaneously, one visible and one behind a screen, their voices layered. This technique materializes his doubled vision and makes identity slippage a theological problem. The radio igloo becomes a shrine; the correcting frequency becomes the voice of spiritual arbitration.
Scholars note Ta'zieh's traditional focus on martyrdom and refusal-unto-death aligns with the doctrine of refusal — the sacred incompleteness Katita invokes when saying "we can break the cycle." Unfinishability becomes covenant.