A Person Who Has Never Even Been Married... - Appearances Spotlight
Snap Judgment
Snap Judgment and PRX
4.8 • 11.2K Ratings
🗓️ 8 January 2021
⏱️ 34 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
An Iranian American examines herself and her life in a one-woman audio show that straddles the line between fiction and truth. Snap Judgment presents, “A Person Who Has Never Even Been Married...” a special spotlight on the Appearances podcast.
This episode contains strong language, scenes of domestic turmoil, and mentions sex. Sensitive listeners, please be advised.
From Mermaid Palace and Radiotopia, Sharon Mashihi brings you Appearances. This podcast brings to life an Iranian American family and community through the real and fantastical mental machinations of Melanie Barzadeh. Melanie is in her mid 30’s and desires nothing more than to become a mother. The difficulty of finding the right partner seems to be directly connected to the struggles witnessed in her home throughout her entire childhood. As Sharon Mashihi voice-acts all the characters in one family, the depth of the love, pain, and struggle is felt with visceral, profound compassion at every turn.
This is episode 2 of a 9 episode audio mind trip. Go on… go listen to all the episodes and subscribe to this amazing podcast!
The roles of Melanie, her family members, and all the wedding guests were performed by Sharon Mashihi. The role of Ponch was performed by Thatcher Keats. This episode also featured clips from an interview with Rabbi Tarlan Rabizadeh. The story consultant was Sunita Prasad. The associate producer of pre-production was Monique Laborde. The associate producer was Ariel Mejia. The mix engineer was Harry Knazen. Kaitlin Prest is the executive producer and editor of Appearances.
The show was made with support from New York State Council on the Arts, Madowell, the Ragdale Foundation, Union Docs, and IFP.
Sound design by Pat Mesiti-Miller
Snap Season 11 - Episode 42
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Snap, Judgment, Studios. |
| 0:07.0 | Okay, so I always thought it was just me. |
| 0:18.3 | But it was just me that played out alternative futures with this imaginary cast. |
| 0:23.5 | But every fork in the road, what would that other go ahead and do? |
| 0:27.2 | Does it work out for him? |
| 0:29.2 | And if it does, maybe this Glenn should do it back-landed. |
| 0:34.6 | And it turns out that other people, they deployed this same life trick. |
| 0:38.8 | And today's Snap Judgment Spotlight is from Sharon Machihi, the creator of a new podcast |
| 0:43.9 | series from Rermade Palace in Radio Topia. |
| 0:46.2 | It's called Appearances. |
| 0:47.6 | And Appearances is a fictional shell for sure, but it has a lot of Sharon's real life |
| 0:53.6 | in it. |
| 0:54.6 | She admits that she made this show because she wanted to have a kid so she decided to |
| 0:59.9 | invent a story. |
| 1:00.9 | It's a story about a neurotic and American woman, similar to herself named Melanie. |
| 1:07.3 | And I am no psychiatrist, but perhaps, perhaps telling the story of Melanie and her family, |
| 1:15.4 | she was sharing a way of examining her own situation. |
| 1:18.6 | But it jumped in. |
| 1:20.3 | At episode two of Appearances, this piece it does reference sex and domestic turmoil. |
| 1:26.7 | And so far, we know that the main character, Melanie, she's the black sheep of the family. |
| 1:32.9 | And she's been in this on and off relationship with her boyfriend, Ponch, and she's thinking |
| 1:37.8 | about having a kid. |
... |
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