Performing Iran

Culture, Performance, Theatre

Babak Rahimi

• Publisher: I.B. Tauris
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9780755635122
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Middle Eastern History
• Index: History

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.

Part I

PERFORMING TRADITION: PAST TRACES IN THE PRESENT

1

MINSTRELS: THE WISE TEACHERS OF ANCIENT IRAN

Soodabeh Malekzadeh

Stories live in your blood and bones, follow the seasons and light candles on the darkest night – every storyteller knows she or he is also a teacher.¹

—Patti Davis

Iranian storytelling traditions are mirror images of the past, present and future of the Iranian people and their worldviews. They serve as a system that stores socio-cultural values and ensures their transmission through time and even geographical location. Whether in the form of prose or poetry, such traditions are ultimately performative literature. They are enacted with dramatic elements such as voice and tone manipulation, episodes of audience/performer interaction, and a reliance on the audience’s power of visualization through the use of powerful literary devices. Performed songs and stories ranged from epic heroic deeds to tales of love and heartbreak and were either part of long traditions of myth and folklore or improvised to suit their time and social space. Iranian storytellers also possessed a profound understanding of the cultural needs of their community and time, strategically basing their performative content on a desired socio-cultural outcome.

In the context of ancient Iran, storytellers played two crucial roles that will be discussed in this chapter. First, they were responsible for the transmission of socio-cultural principles to younger generations and hence served as cultural teachers. Shahrzad – the protagonist of the overarching plot of Hezar Afsan, the central framework for One Thousand and One Nights – is one of the most famed storytellers in the world of global fiction.² Shahrzad is not merely a storyteller, though, but a skilled performer and instructor as well.³

[She] had perused the books, annals and legends of preceding Kings and the stories, examples and instances of bygone men and things; indeed, it was said that she had collected a thousand books of histories relating to antique races and departed rulers. She had perused the works of the poets and knew them by heart; she had studied philosophy and the sciences, arts and accomplishments; and she was pleasant and polite, wise and witty, well read and well bred.⁴

The second function of storytellers, especially those employed by the royal court, was to serve as messengers. While entertaining courtiers was their primary function, they were also instrumental in conveying ‘distressful’ news to the sovereign and in turn maintaining peace and order at court – a role that has more or less been overlooked. The queen of One Thousand and One Nights, Shahrzad, tactfully and diplomatically uses her performative storytelling skills to soothe the pains of the mad king and stops him from shedding more blood.⁵ It is precisely this role that sets Shahrzad apart from her global peers.

Moreover, Iranian storytelling, as a performative art, was most frequently accompanied by music. Hence the term ‘minstrel’ may be more suitable for this social role. Xenophon, the Greek historian and the a mercenary of Cyrus the Younger, writes that ‘even to this day, the barbarians [Persians] tell in story and in song that Cyrus was most handsome in person, most generous of heart, most devoted to learning and most ambitious, so that he endured all sorts of labor and faced all sorts of danger […]’.⁶ The Parthian gosān and the Sasanian khunyāgar also held a similar position.⁷

The minstrels of ancient Iran operated in both public and royal spaces. Xenophon, who lived amongst the Persians, does not differentiate between royal and public spaces when speaking of Iranian minstrelsy, which allows us to assume that the heroic stories echoed through palaces and humble cottages alike.⁸ While minstrels are commonly depicted at the royal court, we know from later sources that they also frequently performed at communal spaces known as meydan, or the town square. Later, specifically as the result of increasing urbanization during the Safavid period, we see the emergence of a more enclosed space known as the Qahveh Khane or the coffee house where events such as Shahnameh-khwani or naqqali would be performed.⁹ While operating in two different spaces, both royal and public forms of minstrelsy complemented one another and touched on similar values, rendering the binary between the two types of literature as insignificant. The ‘mirror for princes’ genre, for example, may well have been an instructional tool for all Iranians and not just members of the royal family. What made such literature timeless was that it allowed each individual or social group to use it in their own distinct way as their imagined communal and individual identities were shaped and reshaped by stories handed down by one generation after another.

Cultural instruction through minstrelsy

Storytelling acts as a system that reinforces the transmission of cultural and ideological traditions, customs and beliefs.¹⁰ It also serves as a prototype for social expression and communication, providing ‘culturally acceptable models of behaviour’.¹¹ Strabo, the Greek philosopher and historian, alludes to the role of Iranian minstrels as teachers and touches upon the theme of ‘didacticism’ when dealing with the topic of tales and stories. Strabo writes, ‘They [the Persians], use as teachers of science their wisest men, who also interweave their teachings with the mythical element, thus reducing that element to a useful purpose and rehearse both with song and without song the deeds both of the gods and of the noblest men.’¹² While the pleasure of listening to a well-told story of adventure and bravery is more than obvious, such stories were held valuable mainly because of what they taught the youth; lessons of valour, glory and how to be an honourable human.¹³ Hannaway adds that ‘in Persian romances, both popular and courtly, instruction is combined with entertainment. Listeners are instructed in the traditional social and moral values of the Iranian common people […] Popular romances thus complement courtly romances in preserving and transmitting traditional values’.¹⁴ Storytelling then, in turn, reinforces those values and promotes their social implementation. In a cycle of invention and reinvention, traditional values become fundamental in keeping storytelling as a performative art alive and thriving. Could the survival and eternality of ancient stories and tales have been due to their core cultural messages or the thread of ‘instruction and didacticism’ which is woven into the plot of the story?¹⁵ Gorgāni writes that Vis o Rāmin is not only beautiful and popular amongst all people but is also highly didactic, emphasizing the value of the lessons and teachings hidden beneath the surface of the story and concealed within its symbolism.¹⁶

Minstrels as tactful messengers

Delving deeper into the role of minstrels at court, one comes upon a unique and interesting function, where they used their literary, performative and cultural knowledge to gently prevent possible predicaments from causing disruptions.¹⁷ First we learn of their high status at court, which meant they were privy to the most intimate affairs and rumours that took place in the dark corners of the palace.¹⁸ Also, aside from knowing ‘many stories capable of charming mortals […] [and] spreading the deeds of men and gods’, Iranian minstrels were tactful messengers and bearers of emotionally disruptive news to the king.¹⁹ It is through the interaction, sometimes invisible, between the performer and the audience that the minstrel achieves such control over his audiences’ emotions.²⁰

Athenaeus, the Greek author, writes that the minstrels of the Median court were not only aware of the valour and might of Cyrus himself but also had inside information about the looming war that was about to change the history of the Iranian mainland. Athenaeus sheds lights on the high courtly status of such men, and their role as tactical messengers. He writes,

Astyages was having a feast at that point with his friends, and a man named Angares – he was the most distinguished bard – who had been invited in, sang the other, conventional songs, and at the end said that a great beast, even bolder than a wild boar, had been allowed to escape into the swamps; if it got control of the territory around there, it would soon have no difficulty fighting large numbers of men. When Astyages asked, ‘what kind of beast are you referring to?’ The bard said that he meant Cyrus the Persian.²¹

Who else is more in tune with the power of words, heroic tales, legends and music than the minstrel? Who else can take the most tragic, disturbing or distressful accounts and convey them in the most delicate, heartfelt and appropriate manner?

Vis o Rāmin provides us with another example of such responsibility. During a night of feasting and entertainment, the royal gosān must inform the king of a disturbing news. The gosān begins with merry songs and beautiful melodies and slowly begins improvising a tale of infidelity. He uses literary devices, such as metaphors and symbolism, to gently let the king know of his wife Vis’s infidelity.²²

Bārbad, the minstrel of the Sasanian king Khosro II, uses a similar strategy to let the king of kings know that his favourite horse, Shabdiz, has passed away. Bārbad ‘improvised a song about Shabdiz, filled with symbolic insinuations and indirect references that he was no longer amongst them. He sang of how Shabdiz would never again run the fields, or graze the meadows, nor will he ever have another taste the sweetness of a serene slumber’.²³ The soothing sound of Barbad’s harp, his gentle voice and his knowledge of Khosro’s temperament allowed him to deliver the news in the least shocking and disruptive manner. Khosro listened calmly and, finally, turned to his beloved minstrel and said: ‘so he [Shabdiz] has passed’.²⁴ The last time we hear of Sasanian minstrels is when the House of Sāsān is fleeing Ctesiphon, taking with them their trusted messengers, performers and teachers, the Khunyāgars.

Minstrelsy in the post-Sasanian period

The high status of Iranian minstrels underwent much adjustment in the post-Sasanian centuries as Iran gradually left behind the world of Late Antiquity and stepped into a new era of change and appropriation.²⁵ However, as Anthony Shay states, the move from Sasanian Persia, in a very cultural term, to Islamic Near East was not ‘as if someone turned off the lights after the battle of Nahavand in 642 CE and […] the next day dawned Islamic: everyone wore Islamic clothing […] and lived an Islamic lifestyle’.²⁶ Storytellers, as traditional preservers and transmitters of cultural values, stayed active and central, despite going through a wave of religious and literary hostility that interestingly had already existed in the region before the Arab conquest of Iran, if not amongst Iranians.²⁷ Minstrelsy, while evolving and/or covering new subjects, continued to be an essential part of the Iranian society and culture. Even in the post-Sasanian era, we can say that the role of minstrels very much resembled that of Sasanian times. We hear of the famed khunyāgars in the service of the Umayyads, Abbasids and later Turkic rulers. For example, Ebrahim Moseli and his son Eshaq were not only elite courtiers but also highly respected minstrels.²⁸

The Iranian minstrels’ exquisite art and skills brought them fame, wealth and influence. However, history still owes these individuals a much greater applause for their role as the protectors, transmitters and instructors of Iranian traditional and cultural values. Especially in post-Sasanian times, their skills allowed them to sing of the values of a nation conquered and subjugated, whose culture was vulnerable to erosion and erasure. Ultimately, Iranian minstrels were the soothsayers who gradually breathe life into a ‘socio-cultural’ entity that is in transition and ultimately have a fundamental role in the creation of a hybrid culture that guarantees the survival of a ‘past’ that could have easily been subjected to oblivion.

2

THE SCARLET STONE: AN INFATUATED WISDOM

Shahrokh Yadegari

This chapter discusses the stage production of The Scarlet Stone, whic...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle Page
• Title Page
• Dedication Page
• Contents 
• List of Figures
• List of Contributors
• Notes on Transliteration
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Part I: PERFORMING TRADITION: PAST TRACES IN THE PRESENT
• Part II: PERFORMING (POST-REVOLUTIONARY) IRAN: SPACE, STAGE AND THEATRE
• Part III: RESTAGING IRAN IN DIASPORA SPACES
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index
• Imprint