Silk Road Rising presents a staged reading of Conference of the Birds

Editor's note: this 2013 event piece is archived as published.

Silk Road Rising, the Chicago-based theater company dedicated to producing works that center South Asian, Middle Eastern, and other Asian and Asian-American perspectives and stories, presented a staged reading of Conference of the Birds — the twelfth-century Sufi poem by the Persian poet Farid ud-Din Attar — as part of its programming that brought classical and contemporary works from the Asian literary tradition to Chicago audiences.

The poem, one of the masterpieces of Persian mystical literature, follows a company of birds who undertake a long and difficult journey to find the Simorgh, their mythical king. Along the way, through allegorical conversations and stories, Attar explores themes of spiritual transformation, the obstacles that prevent humans from achieving union with the divine, and the nature of the self and its dissolution. The journey is both literal and metaphorical — the birds' challenges mirror the stages of spiritual development in Sufi practice.

A staged reading, which presents the text with minimal theatrical apparatus — actors reading from scripts, limited or no set and costume design — is a format that allows audiences to encounter the language and ideas of a work directly, without the potential distraction of full production design. For a text like Conference of the Birds, which has been translated and adapted in numerous forms and which operates through image and allegory rather than conventional plot, a staged reading can be a particularly honest format.

Silk Road Rising's programming addressed a genuine gap in Chicago's cultural landscape: the rich literary and artistic traditions of South and Southwest Asia, Iran, and their diasporas received relatively little representation in mainstream theatrical programming, and the company provided a dedicated venue for that representation.

The reading offered audiences an encounter with Attar's vision — a journey toward something inexpressible, undertaken through the medium of birds.