Dancing in the streets for freedom of the theater

Every child in Iran knows that theater is a dialog between people, artists, and the state. In Iran, people act as if they are three different entities: the people, the art, the power. In this piece, I would like to tell the short story of a great misunderstanding which can only be told in such an exemplary way in Iran. It is the story of how a state takes over theater in order to turn the public against art.

It is a tragic story. It begins with the invention of theater out of the spirit of enlightenment, and ends with the destruction of culture, the public, and consequently the state. Yet theater does not oppose the state. Theater is only fundamentally opposed to tyranny.

Under the law, the state has no right to produce theater, but should support it. The ever-increasing pressure being exerted on the theater by various institutions and positions in Iran only underlines the fact that theater is confronted with ideological positions. And precisely they are its problem. It is only a small step from harmless “theater as a means of expression” to “theater with political and social themes” and then another to “theater as social criticism.” Already theater is accused of being dangerous, just as women are accused of being dangerous. Just like the women who are currently ridding themselves of police “control of women,” of the “Gasht-e-Ershad,” the Guidance Patrol that monitors law and morality, the theater is also coming under threat. Those who evade control are a danger – so says the state.

Censorship has forced Iranian theater to refer to life and reality only in allegorical or ironic aesthetics so as not to appear dangerous. Although theater is nothing less than a social event, prohibitions and restrictions provoke it into circumventing these prohibitions and restrictions. Consequently, it becomes political out of necessity – like all people who do not want to be oppressed and devalued.

The history of Iranian theater, it seems, is a history of censorship and the police. Both are considered teachers of society. Both censorship and the police are excellent instruments for enforcing the law. But wasn’t the theater itself intended from the beginning to play this very role – that of the teacher? It wanted to be newspaper and informant, educator and entertainer, as a social event that came from the street and that is now – at this very moment – being put back onto it.

Why is the theater under the supervision of guardians who can incapacitate it with a wave of their hands? Why does a society marginalize its cultural creators, if not to place all cultural power solely on the shoulders of the state itself? When will the creators of culture and art be the guardians of culture again?

The third event was Constitutional Revolution (1901-1906) that brought about the establishment of the first National Parliament and became a ground to present theatre as a social and educational necessity such as “school” and “newspaper”. Hassan Moqadam (1898-1925) in a speech at Dar-Alfonon in 1922 declared: In Nations where people have not yet understood the meaning of freedom and there is no freedom to speak the truth, theatre per se is an effective means, because we can use it as an eye-opener and through it we can implant ideas in people’s minds. That is why the theatre is politically quite significant.

These events and trends had two main consequences for theatre in post constitutional revolution era: the first is to approach theatre as a media, and the second is its social and critical function for enlightening people. In first approach –that is “theatre is a media”- theatre is considered as a “means” or “tool” for expressing truth and delivering news and in second approach its critical-social aspect predominated; meaning that enlightening the people was accompanied by a certain attitude towards analyses of rationale for the theatre. In this respect, the Critique that Akhondzadeh puts forward could be considered as a more advance form of the reading that considers theatre as a media. For, in his approach the theatre is not merely a medium, means or tool for expressing or conveying the subjects. Besides that, it includes an analytical and investigative approach to human condition, and following that it includes an approach to nature of theatre. However, in media reading theatre is merely a means for expression that its form is not supposed to be altered by necessity of theme, situation or subject. Akhondzadeh believed that advices and preachments aren’t able to affect the civil habitudes and do not lead to the thought. So, the art of Critique could awaken the minds by activating critical thinking. The common characteristic of both approaches were apparent in the fact that both searched for their ideas and ideals exclusively in [written] plays. This textualism and its consequences is still common characteristic of many theatre groups in mainstream and official theatre of Iran.

Occupation of Iran by Russian and British armies during first world war in 1914; a widespread famine which caused the death of one-third of population; invasion of Ottoman empire to Azerbaijan; rebell of tribes in Bushehr, Khuzestan, Fars, Kurdistan and Kermanshah; dissolution of parliament; outbreak of plague and typhoid; occasional uprising of people against invaders in Tabriz and Rasht; all of these factors paved the way for Reza Khan’s (later Sardar Sepah, and then Reza Shah) coup d’etat in 1921. By downfall of Qajar Dynasty after 130 years rule and rise of Pahlavi Dynasty in 1925 and approaching to modernism in governing the country, the first governmental attitudes towards theatre were gradually shaped. This attitude after more than a century still remains and revolutions and social, political, governmental and semi-ideological reforms have not attempted to changed it.

By end of world war II and pulling out the occupation forces the open space provided for political parties and theatre artists that found a room to freely follow their interests. This phase lasted until 1948. In this era, Iranian theatre experiences freedom in theatre, freedom in new social issues and freedom to express political interests and thinks about expanding critical theatre into political theatre. One among those who attempted in this method was AbdolHossein Noushin (1907-1971). He was the first Iranian who studied theatre at the Toulouse conservatory in France and with his academic and practical skills began translating, adapting, acting and directing theatres. He who was a member of the Marxist Toodeh Party, was one of the first who sought to practice the critique theatre with a political attitude in favor of party and the labor.

The Parliament vote to designate Dr. Mohammad Mosadeq (1882-1967) as prime minister in 1951. Its beginning of a two-year period before the second coup in 18th of August 1953 in which Iranians carried out more political acts in the streets. In this time parties were activated again while trade unions and artistic groups freely worked and produced. Mosadeq’s direct approach to people that was a great deed at the time and emulated by other political groups drove people to interest more in parties, newspapers and theater. Mosadeq’s international victories in defending Iranian rights, as well as his other measures such as the “Economy without Petroleum” plan while Britain imposed sanctions on Iran, reconstruction of economy based on national production, development of democratic activities that led to an increase in political activists, proclaiming legal freedoms, presenting the Act of Public Security, establishing the Social Security Organization for workers, and passing the Act of Independence Mosadeq was looking for a way to empower the lower classes and create a middle class, which was a prerequisite for the institutionalization of theatre in Iran, which was not achieved at the time.

Mosadeq’s opinions regarding the interrelationship of political independence of country and political autonomy of people led to new concepts of social institutions such as theater. because the common demands of Iranians from the constitutional revolution, “freedom” and “law,” proved unattainable due to a misunderstanding of these concepts. During the constitutional revolution, freedom was seen as disorder and chaos, and most people had no idea what they were chanting for. Consequently, freedom was envisioned as an obstacle to lawful governance. This understanding’s axiomatic deduction concludes that tyranny was preferable to chaos. Due to the society’s inability to conceive freedom, tyranny legalized itself and considered social freedom as aberrant.

The “white revolution” initiated by Shah in 1962 prepared the way for the expansion of the Iranian middle class, as evidenced by increases in civil population, literacy, and social welfare. So, for the first time, we could discern an approach toward new performative forms in a small portion of Iranian theatre from 1969 to 1979. In this approach, performing a play is not the same as performing a text, and social criticism is pursued not in the [written] play and its content, but in the form and atmosphere of the performance. Interestingly, because of this attitude, this secondary little trend was boycotted even by leftist Marxist groups. It was discovered here that theatre had not abandoned the concept of “theatre as medium” as well as the belief that “theatre must be political thematically” during those years.

Aside from Lalehzari’s well-known comedic theater groups, three more theatrical groups (groups associated to public theaters that some or most of them had leftist leaning, independent leftist groups, and independent groups with no political inclination) shared the notion that theatre is performing a text and specifically conveys a social issue. These are precisely the elements that censorship requires, because censorship has a textual procedure and logic and shares them in the notion that theatre is a text. As a result, the belief that “theatre is a text” is preferable for the state since it allows it to control the theatre. Some Iranian theatrical groups chose to stage foreign plays in which non-Iranian characters faced challenges that were thematically related to issues in Iranian society in order to avoid censorship

Following the Islamic Revolution in 1979, which replaced the Monarchy with an Islamic Republic, there was a period that lasted until April 1980, when the Cultural Revolution and the closure of colleges were announced. During this time, theatrical groups, especially those affiliated with political parties and movements, were able to freely develop their works. This explosive freedom was actually a thematic one that Iranian theater had experienced previously following the Constitutional Revolution, then in the time of 1941-1948, and finally during the period when Dr. Mosadeq served as prime minister until his overthrow in the 1953 coup. The majority of plays being produced at the time were comedies that parodied the monarchy, dramas that showed how appalling the security apparatus of the previous administration was, and plays that honored the revolution’s heroes and combatants. and for the first time, Bahram Bayzaee wrote and staged a play about assassinating the king called “Death of Yazdgerd” at Theatr-e-Shahr in Tehran. It may seem absurd that a king could not be assassinated in any play prior to this period, hence William Shakspear’s “Macbeth” was one of the forbidden plays to perform.

Iranian theater, on the other hand, regarded freedom as thematic freedom. To the best of my knowledge, only one street performance with documentary characteristics was performed in Tehran during that 16-month period, and no one, including those sympathetic and antipathetic to the situation who occasionally disrupted theatres with violence, noticed that for the first time a group tried hand in a modern form that was more interested in finding a new relation of spectators and performers than in themes and that was the most viable reaction to the time.
That was “Mr.Abbas worker of Iran-National” directed by Saeed Soltanpour (1940-1981) – an incredibly brilliant performance that went unnoticed due to the group’s Marxist leanings and possibly due to the radical positions that Soultanpour had previously taken. All of the reactions to this performance were merely radical and party-based praises or criticisms, to the point where it’s impossible to find a single instance that noticed why this performance wasn’t performed in traditional theatre space or how novel and inventive the narrative form, using placards and doing documentation by play-backing real people’s voices during the show. “Mr.Abbas worker of Iran-National” went overlooked and poorly comprehended as if it had never been staged. Let’s not forget that, despite the freedom that had been won at the time, the official and mainstream Iranian theatre was unable to form an institutional or professional alliance or participate in a union; this is an issue that Iranian theatre continues to suffer today.

From 1990 to 1998, during the presidency of Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani (1934-2017), that technocrats came to administration to rebuild the ruins of war, culture, and hence the theatre, was not a priority. It was a dark moment when numerous theaters were shut down and officials publicly declared that they were preventing theaters. For a living, many actors migrated into the film and television industries.

Mohammad Khatami’s (1943-) presidency from 1998 to 2005 was a golden age for many cultural sectors, including theater. Inviting international theatre companies to Iran and sending Iranian theatre groups to international festivals, as well as producing mutual Iranian-European works like Helena Waldmann’s “Letters from Tentland”, laid the groundwork for the development of young artists, the majority of whom were children in the 1980s and are today valuable cultural assets of Iranian theatre. We can mention a few of them here: Samaneh Zandinejad, Pantea Panahiha, Aliasghar Dashti, Reza servati, Amirreza Koohestani, Golzar Hazfi, Hamid Pourazari, Maryam Mohammadi, Ali Shams, Ashkan Kheilnejad, Farzaneh Meidani, Mohammad Mosavat, Yousef Bapiri, Tannaz Tabatabaee, Morteza Esmaeel lKashi, Pegah Tabasinejad, Mehdi Mash’hoor, Jaber Ramezani, Armin Javan, Ava Sharifi, Ramin Akbari, Hamed Asgharzadeh, Negar Javaherian, Shahab Agahi, Narguess Behroozian, Bahar Katoozi, Kayhan Parchami, Tahereh Hazaveh, Shakiba Bahramian, Mohammadreza Aliakbari, Kayvan Sarreshteh, Mahfam Nozhat-Shoar, Shima Mirmohammadi, Milad Shajareh, Hamed Rasouli, Majid Aghakarimi, Bita Kharestani, Jalal Tehrani, Mojtaba Karimi, Naghmeh Ma’navi, Gelareh Rayhani, Nazaninzahra Rafeie, Homayoun Ghanizadeh, Saeed Behnam, Azadeh Ganjeh and… What distinguishes these young artists from others is their unwillingness to follow conventional textual theatre and instead pursue experiences with body language, new performative forms, and discovering the interaction of theatre and its spectators in environment.

The project of shrinking and putting pressure on the middle class, which in turn put pressure on the inferior classes, that began with Ahmadinejad’s administration and manifested itself in two major characteristics – “inflation, increase of prices, and general poverty” and “explosive growth of nouveau riche bourgoeisie” – accelerated in the middle of 2021. People’s purchasing power was decreased by one-third, and in some cases much more. In this context, the arrest of Mahsa Amini by police (2000-2022) and her death while under detention in September 2022 led to the closure of all performances, and the Iranian women movement with the motto “woman, life, freedom” once again led to protest performances and converted the streets into a stage. Meanwhile, a deficient cultural policy and a seemingly deliberate policy to marginalize artists in an administration that called itself revolutionary prompted theatre professionals to protest – a group that was gradually prohibited from expressing societal issues and problems from 2009 to 2022.

The shutdown of theatres is now a reaction to everything that has been taken away from theatre and the community of its audience. Censorship and arbitrary decisions made by inept and fearful cultural officials, as well as living in an unsustainable, limited, and fragile cultural environment in which the role of the artist and the image of Iranian society had been so humiliated that made worry and doubt about the rationale and necessity of theatre, were some of the factors that prompted such a reaction. Iranian women’s protests included something whose loss was more apparent following the ban on choreographers and modern dancers in February 2022: the body. The demand for freedom of the body in public protest performances by a generation of young and adolescent Iranian girls and boys has a clear message for the future of theatre in Iran: that is a demand for presenting a true image of Iranian men and women on theatre stages. This is a message from a generation in which just a few could find a way to express themselves through theatre and the majority were excluded; they are the generation born in the 1990s and 2000s.

As a result of the neglect of amateurism in Iranian theatre, there is no process through which these young people can begin their theatrical careers, while cultural officials and directors of cultural institutions, as well as theatre professionals, have no responsibilities or have never felt the need for it.

During the recent protests, the people, the police, and the organized lumpen – recalling the agents/performers organized by the tyrant, Mohammad Ali Shah – have once again taken center stage. With yells, figures, and slogans that are not allowed on theater stages, people have taken over the streets. They courageously take politics to the streets since that is the only arena in which they can be present. As a result, theater is now perplexed that it can no longer lure these people into theaters to witness the censored image of themselves. theatre’s worries and doubts would be directed to other sorts of aesthetics from now on, and noticed more on a new attitude toward theme, society, form and atmosphere of theatre and its connection to the gaze of audience.

The purpose of the brief introduction to this text about the state of Iranian theater from the time of the constitutional revolution until the present was to help readers understand how the theater responded to social and political events and how long periods of tyranny and brief bursts of freedom expanded or constrained the art form. It might be the time to pose these two parallel questions now. The first one is: Why are Iranian states so terrified of theater? This dread causes them to manage theatre as they would any other social phenomenon. for this control Some agents and mediators who know people better than artists and artists better than people are required to dictate their relationships, which is an impossible and disastrous scenario. One hundred years of tyranny and surveillance over theatre have not only resulted in a controlled and desirable theatre, but have also taken the theatrical stages into the streets, because people, artists, and even the state and government have been absent from theatre stages. Theatre is a forum for dialogue between three groups: artists, audiences, and the state, but the inherited tyrannic attitude from a hundred years ago technically created a situation in which artists and audience gaze were stood against the third party. Then the tyrannical attitude toward culture has only one option to survive: total elimination of culture, which entails elimination of people and the state. Turning toward the theater is turning toward the people, because the theater is never against the state, but always against tyranny.

The second question is; how can theater be tyrannical or decadent? the second question is: how theatre could be tyrannical or decadent? theatre become decadent y by censorship as well as by mere thematic attitude. today, that type of theatre that it is built on the principles of “theatre is a means of expression” and “theatre as a social critique’ can be labeled as decadent. Because, from both points of view, theatre is a secondary phenomenon with a primary task, and the goal of its production is to carry out the task. In this way, the censorship apparatus increased tendency toward “theatre as a tool” and “theatre that is thematically political and social” by establishing constraints and prohibitions as well as offering means to navigate it. While theatre as such, and not its theme, is a social event, the censorship machinery has driven Iranian theater to depict truth and life in allegorical or ironical Aesthetics.

According to the law, the government is only required to support theater, not produce it. therefore, imposing more and more pressure on theatre by various institutions emphasizing an ideological and theatrical above the law authority that pretends its enforcing the law. Another instance was the figurative term “guidance patrol,” which sought to put the police in the position of “guidance of woman” under the cover of the law. What premise recognizes the police as the society’s teacher? This reversal of metaphors and ideas represents the decay of ideas. With such a reversal of the premises, is it possible to remain human in this world?

As a result of what has occurred in street performances, theater has been driven into a new aesthetics in which it is seen as a gathering and social event. It is a maturity that doesn’t require supervision. As long as some people have the status of cultural guardians, the creators of culture are no longer in charge, because they have already been literary marginalized.Do, in the absence of supervision and guardians, the creators of culture and art would be taken responsible. The government is entirely responsible for a society’s continued underdevelopment if cultural producers are excluded. Iranian tyranny tradition prevents the governments from abdicating this responsibility and handing it on to those who should genuinely be in charge.

Iranian society today need a rediscovery of itself, as well as public trust, autonomy, and freedom in thought and novel Aesthetics, in order to exist again as a viable, informed, and responsible people in their nation. The dictatorial attitude toward woman, life, freedom, art, culture, religion, and law is discredited among Iranians now, since, unlike the situation that led into the constitutional revolution, Iranians today have a clear image of toward woman, life, freedom, art, culture, religion, and law. It might not be so inaccurate to argue that Iran’s constitutional revolution has now emerged victorious after 117 years of neglect. It is simultaneously a sign of an end and a marker of a new beginning. Disapproval of women’s and young people’s protests, as well as viewing freedom as chaos, is a knowingly or unknowingly return to the misunderstanding of 117 years ago. Iranian young people, this precious human capital who lately arrived to the stage, smashed all the outmoded forms and put a stop to that 117-year neglect through their spectacular street dance, explicit and out-bursting performances, tragic stand-up comedies, and post-dramatic presence.

There is a lot to say about the details of street performances. there is some good news concerning the response of theatre toward what has happened in Iranian streets recently; theatres are closing and some plays in nontheatrical locations keep running for a restricted number of people. There are whispers that say: must be novel; the relationship between theatre community members must be changed; the gathering and being together must be done in a more correct manner; new performative spaces must be considered; characters must be presented in their most real and necessary image and must be seen in relation to the form of their life; must consider the body, human body, political body, social body, space-aware body, natural body, civil body, moral body,thinking body, commodified body, poetic body, mechanized body, technological body, body of silence, body of speech and etc. All of them are novel ideas that would be considered by the theater. Despite the challenges, we must have faith in emerging young cultural capitals.