Iranian theatre in the Pahlavi period and the nativist discourse on Iranian drama
Iranian theatre of the early Pahlavi period has not received much attention and the space devoted to it in surveys of the history of Persian drama is rather limited. That theatre under Reza Shah was supposedly rather dull is ascribed to the stifling intellectual climate of the time, the rigorous censorship and the premise that modern theatre in the European tradition still remained widely alien to Iranian culture and public interest. The period under Reza Shah is regarded as a time of stagnation for Iranian theatre, especially if contrasted to the relative liberality of the Constitutional era and the years after Reza Shah’s abdication up to the coup d’etat of 1953. Widespread opinion holds that few plays of literary quality were written and theatre groups continued to be loose associations of amateurs, since no formal training for actors existed.2 On the other hand, the Pahlavi state supported western theatre as a modern art form and realized its educational potential. This should later on materialize in a special sub-commission of the Organization for Public Enlightenment (the Sazman-e Parvaresh-e Afkar).3 The increasing presence of women on stage has been noted as one of the few positive developments for the theatre scene under Reza Shah.
In part, this overall negative evaluation of theatre in the early Pahlavi period is due to a lack of primary texts and sources that has made it difficult for both scholars of modern Persian literature and for experts of cultural history to evaluate the period correctly. Quite recently, a number of editions of valuable primary sources and the publication of selected plays written in the 1920s and 1930s allow us to draw a different picture. The impetus for a re-evaluation interestingly is initiated primarily by local historians or historians of culture, rather than by the field of Persian literature or theatre studies.4 Not only in Tehran, but in many other cities an impressive number of independent groups of actors existed, and there were troupes that regularly toured throughout the country. New plays were written, new translations or adaptations were made and new genres such as operettas gained ground. We realize that theatre in the Reza Shah period was not necessarily part of an intellectual framework of high culture, although several literary critics and renowned authors also wrote for the theatre. Neither did it dominate the literary discourses of modernity. But theatre had its place in the middle of society, where it was appreciated because of its entertaining qualities. Theatre could thus be seen as a precursor to cinema as a popular pastime, at a time when neither radio nor television existed.
Yet there is another reason for the rather sceptical outlook on theatre in the Reza Shah period. Those who deal with Iranian theatre or drama will have to come to grips with two dominant narrative discourses that on the surface are mutually exclusive, but in some instances run parallel to each other. One is a strong nativist discourse of Iranian theatre that emphasizes the indigenous traditions of drama and public entertainment as opposed to western, imported theatre. Religious plays (ta‘ziyeh), puppet theatre (kheymeh-shab-bazi), folklore comedy (taqlid and ru-howzi), traditional storytelling (naqqali) and mixed forms of entertainment including jugglers and acrobats (ma‘rekeh), musicians and dance all fall into this category.
The other narrative is that of an enlightened European-style theatre that draws its legitimacy from criticizing society and being in the vanguard of progress. This discourse draws a direct line between the socio-critical theatre of the late Qajar period and the committed theatre of the 1960s and 1970s in Iran. Here the story begins with the first modern plays, written by Akhundzadeh (1812-78) and Mirza Aqa Tabrizi, noting only in passing plays by Sadeq Hedayat (1903-51) and Sa‘id Nafisi (1896-1966), before focusing on the famous playwrights Gholamhoseyn Sa‘edi (1936-85), Bahram Beyza’i (b. 1938), or ‘Abbas Na’lbandiyan (b. 1947).5
Quite often these two narratives are neatly separated or delegated to separate studies. In Willem Floor’s survey The History of Theater in Iran the initial five chapters are devoted to folkloristic or traditional forms of theatre, while the second part of equal length covers modern, western-style theatre. Similarly structured was the first attempt to write a larger history of Iranian theatre in 1962, Medjid Rezvani’s Le theatre et la danse en Iran.6 One of the classics on Iranian theatre, Beyza’i’s Namayesh dar Iran from 1965 deliberately excludes western theatre; whereas Ghanoonparvar’s entry on “Drama” in the Encyclopaedia Iranica only refers in the opening lines to “non-western” forms of plays and performances, before focusing on the introduction of western plays in the late Qajar period.7 The usage of terms can also be misleading: while in earlier texts the distinction between namayesh and te'atr was clearly marked, the former denoting all forms of public performances, the latter being exclusively used for western-style theatre, this has been changed by Pahlavi language reform.8
Beyza’i concludes his classic study on traditional forms of Iranian theatre with a poignant critique of the difficult encounter between the West and the East and the resulting hybrid theatre in Iran:
In the end, everything culminates at one point, the encounter with the civilization of the West. Starting one or two centuries ago, in the form of aggressors, colonialists and exporters of goods the West turned against the East. In this encounter it was astounded by the enormous sources of the East's traditions, mysticism and culture, and for its part it astonished the East with the firepower of its forces, its propaganda and its industrial civilization. ... Iran, for example, developed a sense of inferiority vis-a-vis the political, military and industrial superiority of the West, and this feeling infected the realm of culture, the result is well known. In the case of culture, instead of gaining something new, it swiftly gave away what it had. . In the case of theatre, for example, at a time when the West with its turn towards scenic liberties and innovations in performance opened the East a way out of its own impasse, here the new generation of theatre enthusiasts began to narrow things down, to make them complicated and insert limitations in their imitation of the old western styles. ... On such ground, popular types of performance, just at the moment when they wanted and could have undergone a fundamental development, were extinguished, and if nowadays something is still left, it is in its last throes. And what came in its place was a theatre that was not related to us anymore . , it brought forth a theatre which neither belonged to western theatre, nor was it an example for Iranian theatre ... .9
The strong influence of imagined backwardness ( aqabmandegi) and despotism on the reception of western theatre are also stressed by Behruz Gharibpur in the opening statements of his introduction to Te’atr dar Iran. When the representatives of Iranian culture encountered the manifold expressions of Western theatre, opera and ballet during their travels, he concludes, their mental capacities simply proved insufficient to draw a connection between what they saw on stage in the West and what they knew from their own country as ta‘ziyeh or ru-howzi.10
In fact, the nativist discourse identifies Iranian theatre primarily with the religious plays of the Shiite tradition, known as taziyeh.11 While the close association of “true” Iranian theatre with ta ‘ziyeh actually goes back to the nineteenth century with Chodzko’s Theatre persan (1878) it has lately been presented as an act of re-discovery. The fusion of Iranian theatre and ta ‘ziyeh has become stronger under the Islamic Republic, because it allowed a merging of religion and theatre.12 But not only theatre and religion can be harmonized, using ta ‘ziyeh as a bridge, nationalism, religion and theatre are equally reconciled. Since what constitutes a national theatre (te’atr-e melli)?13 In order to be able to construct a direct “national” line of theatrical tradition, taziyeh has to be freed from its Shiite Islamic context. Once one identifies
Mithraic rituals of mourning as the oldest expression of Iranian dramatic performance, one is able to provide a pre-Islamic precursor to the Buyid or Safavid ta ‘ziyeh rituals. This might seem far-fetched, but it is an attempt to oppose the western claim that modern civilization began in Greece and found its individualistic expression early on in the Greek dramatic tradition. The origin of theatre and dramatic performances can thus be located in the Middle East, more particularly in Mesopotamia and Iran.14
Pahlavi-period theatre under Reza Shah does not go well with either one of these two discourses. Protagonists of the nativist discourse hate Reza Shah for his ban on the embodiment of “Iranian Theatre” that is the passion plays of ta‘ziyeh. They strongly condemn his cultural policy, which was opposed to all folklore traditions that the Pahlavi monarch considered expressions of backwardness. The modernists, secularists and leftist critics of Iranian society, on the other hand, see only the repression of political content, the lack of social criticism and the silencing of promising authors such as Mirzadeh ‘Eshqi (1893-1924) and Zabih Behruz (1890-1971).15 They view the rule of Reza Shah as the death blow to the advanced and engaged theatrical tradition that emerged with the Constitutional movement. In the words of Mostafa Osku’i:
Involuntarily, our nation was separated from its own old national theatre and the requirements of modernization led it to follow the master-road of European-style theatre. It is unfortunate that its first advances on this path were not only brought to an early halt by the Reza Khan coup d’etat, but even suffered a falloff for a period of twenty years.16
Reza Shah aimed at creating a modern and westernized Iran and consequently tried to eliminate traditional performances that he considered vulgar, folkloristic and backward. Instead he propagated western theatre, which he regarded as an important tool and as a sign of an advanced civilization. Herein lies his personal commitment to the Red Lion and Sun in Tabriz.
