It all started from a family relationship. A contemporary dancer receives the first-ever prize for choreography in Iran. He receives the prize from the hands of his uncle, a well-known classical theatre actor. They were both on stage, one giving the award and the other receiving it. That was the closest they came to realising a longstanding dream of the nephew’s: sharing the stage with his uncle, a seemingly… impossible task given their vastly different styles. This work began as the realisation of that dream. Ehsan Hemat, a contemporary dancer born in Shiraz and based in Brussels, proposed a project that would make him and Asghar Hemat, his uncle, a classical actor and a follower of the Stanislavsky method, on the same stage.

During the initial research and development phase, Asghar Dashti, an experimental theatre director, and Keyvan Sarreshteh, a young theatre writer, joined the project. Two became four and family relationships zoomed out to professional; a dream project based entirely on feelings evolved into something that is both mathematical and emotional. Now “A in the role of B, when C didn’t make it” is a project about relationships; a bird’s eye view of how our relationships affect our trajectory in life and what a vast and hidden network of people is involved.