And of Clay We Are Created
The world you can access through puppetry is so vast, for me it is like oxygen, like fresh air. You can create beautiful images and breathe emotions. Puppets open your hands; they allow you to create magic.1
— Zahra Sabri (2016)
And of Clay We Are Created Zahra Sabri’s Count to One and the Material Ephemerality of War Ali-Reza Mirsajadi
The performance begins drowned in an eerie light the color of blood. The stage floor is covered in odd circular patches, with lumps of clay strewn about. Two men, dressed head-to-toe in identical
military fatigues, play a game akin to chess on a circular board upstage (fig. 2). The pieces, we come to realize, are made of wet clay; when a piece is captured and tossed aside onto the floor, it loses its shape. After a few rounds, the men spin the board 180 degrees and begin playing for the opposite
side — who wins and who loses is irrelevant. The pace of the game rapidly accelerates as a third man in fatigues flies a
jet plane molded from clay in circles above the mound of deformed chess pieces with the excitement and innocence of a child playing with his favorite toy. One of the men takes the discarded chess pieces and begins molding them into two indecipherable objects while the plane flies to a new mound, this one covered in miniature clay buildings — a city, we realize.
