POP-UP
ries with her said some of Oliaee’s
stories sound like they’re
from another world.
“My heart’s intent was I
wanted to reframe this country
that we think we know, we
have a very western version of
Iran,” she said. “It’s usually
like, old men in beards that all
have really bad eyebrows. I’m
reframing it as women with
amazing eyebrows who are
just f–king with gender, who
are f–king with public spaces,
who are f–king with sports.”
“It starts as almost like a
sport, and they’ve made it poetic,
how to out-trick the government.”
The piece, and the larger
series it spawned from, were
inspired in part by an experience
she had working on Dolly
Parton’s America. While riding
around in the American
South, she thought about her
Iranian grandmothers and
the Middle East — and that
the South, like the Middle
East, is a place vilifi ed and stereotyped.
COURIER LIFE, N 34 OVEMBER 12-18, 2021
Those comparisons
came out in an episode called
“Neon Moss,” but she wasn’t
done thinking about it.
“If you know a lot of Middle
Eastern women, or Persian
women, they are not
oppressed, they are scary, including
my grandma,” Oliaee
said. “My grandma was very
intimidating. That was another
kind of driving force. I
just wanted to show how badass
they are, but also, wow,
these badass women have to
fi ght for every little inch.”
It’s also, Oliaee said jokingly,
a revenge piece for a
trip her parents took to Iran
with her older brother during
the Green Revolution in 2009.
It was the fi rst time they returned
to the country since
they had left in the 70s, and
she wanted badly to join them
— but her parents, worried
about her safety, chose not to
take her along.
“This is kind of my love letter
to wanting to go,” she said.
“I don’t know, after the series
comes out, if I’ll ever be able
to go again. Most of the girls
I’m talking to in the country,
they cannot give me their real
names. It’s a death threat.”
It’s also a story for cousins
who served as a “touchstone
for where I came from,” when
she was a child, who have since
left Iran and cannot return.
The woman who features
most heavily in the visuals
Oliaee will be using at Pop-Up
is already in exile, she said,
which is why she can be so
prominent.
“If you watch the show at
BAM, you will know exactly
which girl I’m talking about,
because her jaw will drop
when you see what she does
because she loves soccer,” she
said. “I have video that no one
has seen from inside the soccer
stadiums, I have new footage
that I got for my series that
is visual of these girls, and
that shows them contorting
their lives and themselves in
order to be able to watch soccer.”
Oliaee’s mom — who features
in the fi rst few minutes
of the piece, and who Oliaee
described as “the fi rst badass
woman I met” — used to ask
her why she wanted to visit
Iran, where she would be “half
a person,” she said. She wants,
in part, to show that they are
not half a person — that she
considers them world leaders.
“What the Iranian girls
are doing is they’re using the
international platform of that
soccer stadium to transmit
the true message out about
who they are and what is going
on,” she said. “That is their genius.
That’s what they’re doing.
They’re telling the truth
about men, and they’re telling
the truth about themselves
from a place that has international
eyes on them. It’s so ingenious.”
BY BEN VERDE
A play performed earlier
this month on a terrace in
Flatbush tackled themes of
neighborhood histories and
gentrifi cation in an ultra-intimate
setting, which was itself
a main part of the plot.
“Terrace Play” (stylized as
“terrace play”) from director
and playwright Elizabeth Irwin,
whose terrace it was performed
on, followed the stories
of two young people on the terrace
of the well-to-do family
they work for in present-day
Brooklyn, contrasted with the
story of two high schoolers in
Flatbush in 2011 on the roof
of the same building before it
was turned into higher-end
apartments.
Actors Charlie Hurtt and
Siercia O’Brien took on the
starring roles of the script,
playing both the residents of
yesteryear, as well as the upper
middle class residents representing
the post-gentrifi ed
neighborhood.
Irwin said she wanted to
do more than just perform the
play on a terrace, and that it
was important to her to have
the setting be meaningful.
“I don’t want this to just be
a play on a terrace,” she said.
“I want there to be a reason
why whatever is going to happen
would take place on a terrace.”
When she fi rst started
planning the play, Irwin researched
her building on
Parkside Avenue near Flatbush
Avenue, and found that
it was once home to a barbershop,
Nelson’s Barbershop,
before it was redeveloped. Irwin
eventually tracked down
Nelson Urraca, the former
owner of the barbershop who
still cuts hair in Flatbush and
interviewed him along with
other Flatbush residents as
part of the research process.
Urraca ended up attending the
play as well.
“It’s pretty vital, whoever
you’re writing about to actually
talk to them,” she said.
“I don’t ever want to write a
story about anyone and not
honor the truth about it.”
Irwin’s research led her
to the second act of the play,
which followed high school
students Omario and Megan
while they hang out on the
roof of the building in 2011,
which at the time was above
Nelson’s Barbershop, where
Omario works sweeping hair
on the weekends.
Omario sees Nelson’s as a
sanctuary from the everyday
strife of living in Flatbush —
a sanctuary that no longer
exists in the present day. Irwin
said she was interested
in exploring the less tangible
things like this that are lost
during gentrifi cation.
“One of the things that I
was interested in focusing on
is the less tangible ways to
measure what happens when
places disappear,” she said.
“It’s more common to hear
about ‘well, this building got
knocked down and this affordable
housing was lost and now
we have this high rise.’ That’s
kind of the standard way we
look at it but I was interested
in the idea of the less tangible
ways that things get lost.”
Irwin said she worked to
promote the play among locals,
and it’s been important
for her to be able to tell a
story about Flatbush actually
within Flatbush.
“Stories of Brooklyn, or any
place, we might see those stories
in a theater in Midtown,
or they’ll bring theater to the
outer boroughs, but what’s
been really lovely has been doing
a play in a neighborhood,
about a neighborhood, and
getting people from the neighborhood
to come,” she said.
The outsiders
Play performed on a Flatbush
terrace explores gentrifi cation
BROOKLYN
Charlie Hurtt and Siercia O’Brien in “terrace play.” Photo by Elizabeth Irwin
Continued from page 33
Shima Oliaee is stepping out of the recording booth to present an all-new
piece at Pop-Up Magazine next week. Courtesy of Shima Oliaee