2018-03-05
1 小时 17 分钟We started realizing that theater's actual function is not to get us more jobs.
Theater's actual function is to leave a lasting mark on our society, like the Greeks did, like the Persians did, like Shakespeare did.
That will tell us how to live life better.
My guest today, Arianne Maed, is a Tony nominated actor, co founder and producer of Water well, which is an arts educator and award winning writer director for film.
When we turn the pages pretty far back, though, there's a pretty amazing and dramatic backstory to his own life that informs his really beautiful and open lens on artistry, performance, and the intersection between that and social justice and citizenship and bringing people of disparate places together.
His family fled Iran shortly after the iranian revolution.
He was just a very small child, but he sort of made his way with part of his family.
Actually, his brother was left behind through Saudi Arabia for a number of years and eventually ended up in Chicago, of all places, where the family had to completely relearn everything about life and essentially start over.
He built a beautiful body of work and continues to do that, starring in major theatrical productions, on Broadway, in movies with people, alongside people like Bill Murray, Spike Lee's productions, Jon Stewart, Robin Williams, and one of the projects that he currently produces, the Accidental Wolf, which features a cast with a combined 36 Tony nominations, including Kelly O'Hara, Laurie Metcalf, Dennis O'Hare, and Ben Ben Mackenzie.
The accidental Wolf has a really cool new way of being able to view that, but we dive into this entire journey.
We dive into why he does what he does, his incredible lens on curiosity, on the role of arts, in becoming a good human being and bringing different cultures together and how he deals with a profession and a field that seems to be populated with persistent and eternal failure and being pushed back and being knocked down and having to just figure it out along the way.
So excited to share Arian's journey with you and his incredible body of work.
I'm Jonathan Fields, and this is good life project.
I believe in curiosity.
I just think that we can't do anything without it, really, and just asking people, it's basically a version of empathy, do you know what I mean?
And, like, empathizing with who people are and what they do.
Were you the curious kid?
Like, is this something that's been a part of you for your life or something you've cultivated?
Yeah, I don't know.
I mean, I think the circumstances of my life, you know, being born in Iran and then moving here as young immigrants in the eighties where Iran was like enemy number one, if you recall, you know, and, like Iran, Russia, which we're kind of back there again.