Play Description: Coca Cola / 2020
Written by NASIR MALEKIJOO
In Coca Cola, the director, consistent with his body of work, skillfully employs the visual language of the stage to engage the audience’s subconscious rather than narrating the story in a straightforward manner. Through this approach, the play’s dazzling yet monotonous color palette, the exaggerated physicality of the actors, their stylized gestures, and the absurd mise en scène collectively construct a caricatured, satirical image of contemporary society.
Structure
The play unfolds in three episodes:
- Episode I reimagines Malekijoo’s earlier work Cola (2016), now retold through two actors portraying a modern Abraham and Ishmael. Set in a space overflowing with canned goods, the father, overwhelmed by consumerist advertising, compels his son into relentless overconsumption.
- Episode II presents a symbolic retelling of Adam and Eve in a modern context. As in the first episode, the man indulges excessively in canned food, while the woman subverts this behavior, persuading him instead to eat a fresh tomato. Their conflict dramatizes the tension between artificial consumption and natural nourishment.
- Episode III shifts to an ironic parody of a TED Talk. Two speakers nostalgically recount their childhoods and youth through the lens of Popeye the Sailor Man, framing it as an absurd encouragement to embrace canned food culture.
