On Iranian Theater

On the East, Iran meets Afghanistan, India, Pakistan,and the culture and history of Indo-China; on the South, it reaches the Persian Gulf with its Arab and African neighbors; 
on the North, it faces the civilization of the Caucasus, Russia, and Central Asia; and on the West it extends to Turkey, which is the border between Asia and Europe.
It is said that in geographic maps the fertile crescent extends its embrace to Greece.
One may be able to observe, in an inverse manner, the parable of illegal immigration from the Aegean Sea to Europe in Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer-Night’s Dream,” 
and the lovers’ escape from the law of Egeus, emphasizing that the structure of this play is strongly infuenced by one of the oldest Persian tales, “One Thousand and One Nights,” 
known better by Europeans as “The Arabian Nights.”
Today, in political geographic maps, with the omen of instigations by Marco Polos in search of oil, Iran is situ-ated in a critical region. On the East and South (Afghanistan 
and Iraq) American soldiers are in control. In Afghanistan, statues of Buddha are destroyed, while in Iraq, the mosques. 
In the North, there exists the coalition of the United States with the newly independent republics of Central Asia; and in the Persian Gulf, soldiers and cruisers have created 
semi-cultures based on an inhumane principle:invasion. When we add local dominations, emigration can be understood.
The customs of ancient plays in southern Persia – such as “Zaar” – are the remnants of African slave customs, which were brought to our southern shores by the Portuguese. The black slave who has left his witchcraft based on mental cures with songs and drums in southern Iran, and has been absorbed by ancient Persian comedy and puppet shows.
Narrative techniques in Iranian plays, such as “naghali” (narration) and “pardeh khani,” are very similar to the narrative traditions of Indo-China.
Another prominen hero who, almost 800 years ago, rendered one of the most important kinds of Persian theater – taziyeh – the subject of his life and martyrdom was Imam Hussein, who went to war with the enemies of God and became a martyr in the year 640 A.D. in Kerbala, Iraq.
Some analysts believe that the customs relating to the “Sorrow of Siavash” (the tragic tale of the death of Siavash as depicted in Ferdowsi’s epic Shahnameh) have been adapted from Caucasian tales.
All the varieties of Iranian plays which have been mentioned here are among conventional theater,” which have one thing in common: improvisation. Even if they are 
imported, these plays have taken a completely popular form, and their improvisational characteristic attest to this.
For example, Iranian black comedy is very similar to the Italian comedia del arte, which is written based on performing contracts, but its theme and dialogue vary freely and environmentally, according to the taste of the audience.
However, Iranian theater has accepted another immigrant, which in order to understand we must turn to the late 19th and the beginning of the 20th century, the entry of Western theater into Iran. This kind of theater entered Iran with translations of plays by Schiller and Molière, which were frst performed in French, only for French people who resided in Tehran, and whose actors were French teachers and a few students who had studied in France.
This kind of drama, which was considered a kind of intellectual theater not meant for the common people, arrived in Iran along with the slogan of reforming the country in 
order to transform feudal Iran to modern Iran. For this reason, after the frst political revolution in Iran (the Constitutional Revolution of 1906) Western theater attracted a great deal of 
attention.
Political parties considered theater a means of propaganda for their own ideas and slogans, while the new intelligentsia considered it a means of enlightenment, 
something in the order of newspapers and tribunes for “progress” and “advancement.” In the time span between the Constitutional Revolution and the second political revolution 
in Iran, the nationalization of oil in 1950, the government gradually learned that it could use theater to its own advantage and against its rivals. This was the period of Romantic 
theater, the entry of Western Romantic heroes to Iran.
Thus, in approximately ffty years, what became known as Western theater in Iran was a remnant of Western Romanticism and Realism, which for completely ignoble reasons, 
and with a political bent, were performed for propaganda purposes or in order to stupefy the people.
A half century before this, while the frst schools and theater departments were being formed in Iranian universities, this image of theater was established as a standard phenomenon.The fabric of the Iranian society and its social phenomena have always necessitated that everything lead to a kind of systematic bonding between all its 
phenomena. I mean there is a special kind of logic between phenomena, which within ultimate disorder, can lead to a kind of complicated inner order.
Iranians possess a vast and deep inner life. Whatever does not exist in the outside world (reality), or is fawed, they create in their inner private world. In the gap between this 
inner and outer reality, a third world exists in which a kind of personal consciousness is born, and it is this personal consciousness that is the cause of the difference between individuals.
In my opinion, theater flls this void between the two worlds, this third world. The signifcant point here is that Iranians rapidly fll the gap between these two worlds. It would suffce to take a look at the heroes in romantic Persian epic literature in order to understand the speed with which they fll this gap, creating a mental storm in the minds of the audience, and in addition, with what speed they reveal and communicate this internal and complicated consciousness.
Shakespeare demonstrates the speed with which one can alternate between the “real world” and the “dream world” in “A Midsummer-Night’s Dream.” He makes this transfer so rapid that one is no longer sure what is “dream” and what is “wakefulness.” This is the same element one can attribute to the most important aspect of Iranian thinking, and it is the turning point in modern Iranian theater and the works of a director such as Amir Reza Koohestani and others such as Attila Pesiani, Mohammad Charmshir, Asghar Dashti, Hamed Mohammad Taheri, Mahmoud Reza Rahimi, Vahid Rahbani…The frst Iranian playwright, Mirza Agha Tabrizi, became familiar with theater through his pen pal, Akhoundzadeh, who lived in Tbilisi, Georgia. Early in the 20th century, since he was not familiar with Western theater, 
Tabrizi wrote plays for performance in Western theater which were based on the techniques of Iranian taziyeh. This form, which did not attract attention in his own time, is respected 
today for its mixing of two dissimilar styles.
In the past half century, schools and academic centers in Iran have taught a kind of standard drama to students; this is why there exists a current of standard theater in Iran, which 
is not at all prepared to deviate from the standard.
About 1000 male and female students in Iran become students of drama. When we include free (private) schools, this fgure reaches something close to 2000.
This standard Western theater acquires its techniques not directly from life, but from standard defnitions of life. These standardized defnitions do not only relate to the 
techniques of drama, but are rather based on standardized defnitions of man, morality, society, psychology… stable and solid theories in which no change occurs while reconstructing 
a theatrical scene. In such plays the characters cannot get out of the historical box.
But in today’s world, who defnes history, and what is standard? Television, newspapers, the police, Hollywood, McDonald’s… which exist throughout the world. None of these standard elements forms human consciousness, or describes the human condition. Rather, they only defne and protect a kind of awareness. What is democracy? The 
problem with democracy is that some people wish to ft democracy into a standardized defnition, for which they train an army and build weapons!
Although a defnition exists for democracy, there is always someone like Oedipus who turns it into a paradox.If, if, if being against what is standard is to be against 
democracy, it would be better for theater to be against democracy. This is what experimental theater groups are seeking throughout the world, including in Iran.Fear not, we must have learned this dramatic “play” and “doubt” from Henrik Ibsen, when in his plays he separates being “the enemy of the people” or “the friend of 
the people” from its standard meaning, and renders it as a sign of a social paradox.
Today in Iran the tendency of young drama groups toward traditional Iranian theater is not nostalgic. It is not even a contemporary usage of ancient techniques. Rather, 
these techniques are for experiencing new meanings of man, place, and time, far from the standard defnitions of theater and life.
Farhad Mohandespoor
(Ph.D) in Art Research in Dramativ Arts
Professor of Tarbiyat Modarres University
Teaher, Reasercher, DIrector
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