The Blind Owl is a haunting tale of loss and spiritual degradation. Replete with potent symbolism and terrifying surrealistic imagery. It details a young man's despair after losing a mysterious lover. And as the author gradually drifts into frenzy and madness, the reader becomes caught between dream and reality.

Sajjadi says he always wanted to do things on the stage, but in the end began his career with painting - only later to appear on the stage. He also made films that still remain in our memories. Quite the contrary, it took him many years to get recognition in theater as well.

He always wanted to write an adaptation of The Blind Owl for the silver screen. He finally finished it in 2014, but with a twist. He also wrote it for the stage. He says he never fell in love with The Blind Owl. This helped him contemporize Hedayat’s masterpiece with great success – and differently.

An Owl Not That Blind is currently on stage at Iranshahr Theater House. It’s a free adaptation of The Blind Owl (1936), Hedayat’s magnum opus and a major literary work of 20th century Iran. Actors include Masoud Keramati, Rahim Norouzi, Nazanin Karimi, and Elham Nami. Here is a quick chat with Sajjadi about his latest work:

Your characters are not that faithful to the original book. They look different?

Hedayat has a romantic character. He lived at a time when lifestyles and cultures were just like that. Europe was at war and Iran was not that much in a great shape either. Not everyone was happy with modernism. It tells the story of an unnamed pen case painter, the narrator, who sees in his macabre, feverish nightmares that the presence of death annihilates all that is imaginary. We are the offspring of death and death delivers us from the tantalizing, fraudulent attractions of life; it is death that beckons us from the depths of life. If at times we come to a halt, we do so to hear the call of death. Throughout our lives, the finger of death points at us.

The narrator addresses his confessions to the shadow on his wall resembling an owl. His confessions do not follow a linear progression of events and often repeat and layer themselves thematically, thus lending to the open-ended nature of interpretation of my story. The narrator has a romantic character just like the character of Rodion Raskolnikov in Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment, which focuses on the mental anguish and moral dilemmas.

I tried to distance myself from having a work that has an outward propensity. The idea was to make it seem more realistic and believable. I tried to make sure there will be no fantasy and there will be no fantasy characters in the story. I tried not to exaggerate my characters.

Actors have different roles. Masoud Keramati seems like having different characters. The same is true about your female characters?

Elham Nami is the wife of Owl. She plays four different characters. Nazanin Karimi has three different characters. Except for the painter’s role played by Rahim Norouzi, others have multiple characters on the stage. This is the essence of The Blind Owl. He seems both the narrator of the story and the characters all at the same time. The whole idea is to make these characters believable. It’s a journey between reality and fantasy but you never notice that.

Are there any borderlines here?

It is the structure of Surrealism - in art and literature which seeks to release the creative potential of the unconscious mind, for example by the irrational juxtaposition of images. The play demands this kind of logic. It is the logic of fantasy and reality. It has an irrational borderline. Its logic is dream. This is what The Blind Owl is all about. When you work between dream and reality and talk about dream, your logic is not linear at all.

There is no line or border in our dreams. Sometimes in your dreams you see people and things that are not familiar. When we wake up, we ask why on earth they came in our dreams – this is the logic of The Blind Owl. That’s why I chose The Blind Owl for adaptation. I could have easily written another book and made it a personal story. I like the ingredients of The Blind Owl. Others feel the same way about the book. I’m not trying to pontificate the book. I was never afraid of approaching it.

Perhaps, your lack of literary fear is the reason why this is a free adaptation of the original book?

This helped me discover new things. There are others who are afraid of discovering a new territory. Perhaps, they are afraid of criticism and disapproval; not me. I might have done it because of ignorance! Who knows? But I was never afraid. I read it when I was just 16. When I began adapting it, that fear had already gone. I made it all my own – that’s what I thought. I might change my mind after ten years, though.

In theater, you always go for new experiments. You are not afraid of doing things differently. Why is that?

I never do things I don’t believe. I never bother to know how much others will come to like my work. This is what happened in the text of the story. I knew I could pull it off because the medium of theater is like cinema. I have done stage design in movies - and I simply repeated them on the stage. First we rehearse everything to extract each and every scene and moment, and then we go for camera, light, and action. I’m now much more confident when I direct on the stage. I have had enough time in the past 30 years to find the subjects I like to work on. I prefer to create them for the stage. The medium of theater is important to me. You cannot possibly tell any kind of story for stage. Last year, I wrote a piece that I plan to take it to the stage if things go accordingly.

Any final point?

Theater is live art. That’s the positive point. The negative point is that when the curtain falls it’s all over. It’s no longer there.