Performing Iran: Culture, Performance, Theatre

The result of collaborative research from noteworthy dramatists and scholars, this volume investigates the dynamic relationship between culture, performance and theatre in Iran. The studies gathered here examine how various forms of performances, especially theatre, have and continue to undergo change in response to shifting political and social settings from the antiquity to the present day. The analysis in this book focuses on performance practices, examining drama, texts, rituals, plays, music, cinema and drama technologies. This is done in order to show how Iran has been imagined through enactments and representations, and reproduced through these performative actions. The book uses a wider definition of the concept of 'performance', offering analysis of a wide range of phenomena, including indigenous rituals – such as the naqqali and taziyeh – and online performances by diaspora communities.

Table of Contents:
Acknowledgments Introduction Notes on Transliteration PART I. Performing Tradition: Past Traces in the Present Chapter 1. Minstrels: The Wise Teachers of Ancient Iran - Soodabeh Malekzadeh Erdaji Chapter 2. The Scarlet Stone: Wisdom and Infatuation in the Story of Rostam and Sohrab in Today's Iran - Shahroukh Yadegari (University of California, San Diego, USA) Chapter 3. The Question of Audience in Abbas Kiarostami's 'A look to Taziyeh' - Babak Rahimi (University of California, San Diego, USA) Part II. Performing (Post-Revolutionary) Iran: Space, Stage and Theater Chapter 4. The Shiraz Arts Festival and the Slide Towards Revolution - Joshua Charney Chapter 5. Iran is the Stage and Youth its Major Players: Seven-Year Educational Excursion into Iran's Socio-Theatre - Mahmood Karimi-Hakak (Siena College, USA) Chapter 6. Acting Out: Hamed Taheri and the Transformative Power of Iranian Underground Theatre - Roxanne Varzi (University of California, Irvine, USA) Chapter 7. Disrupting Bodies, Negotiating Spaces: Performance Art in Tehran - Staci Scheiwiller (California State University, Stanislaus, USA) Chapter 8. “Now It's Your Turn To See”: Jafar Panahi's Cinematic Intervention in Human Rights Discourse - Amy Motlagh (University of California, Davis, USA) Chapter 9. Persistence as Performative: A Brief History of The Evolution of Two Rock Music Scenes in Iran - Siavash Rokni Part III. Restaging Iran in Diaspora Spaces Chapter 10. Probing the Wounds of History: 444 Days, a World Premiere in San Francisco - Babak Rahimi and Torange Yeghiazarian Chapter 11. Performing Glimpses of the Past in Diaspora: The Political Implications of Dance in Nowruz Parades - Rana Salimi (University of California, San Diego, USA) Chapter 12. New Media Performance and (Ar)ticulations of the Self: Conversation with Amir Baradaran - Heather Rastovac Akbarzadeh (University of California, Davis, USA)

About the Author :
Babak Rahimi is Associate Professor of Communication, Culture and Religion at the University of California, San Diego, USA. He is the author of Theater State and the Formation of Early Modern Public Sphere in Iran: Studies on Safavid Muharram Rituals, 1590-1641 C.D. (2011), and co-editor of Social Media in Iran (2015), The Wiley Blackwell History of Islam (2018), and Muslim Pilgrimage in the Modern World (2019).

Review :
This wide-ranging collection of essays provides an illuminating insight into the complex performing culture of modern Iran and its relationship to the new world of global performance.