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Ali Nassirian (b. 1935), now a celebrity in Iranian cinema, was preoccupied, during the 1950s to the 1970s, with the idea of creating a theatre, and supplying it with a repertoire, which would be rooted in Iranian folklore and indigenous theatrical forms. His oeuvre includes thirteen plays, most of which draw, partly or extensively, on Iranian popular improvisatory forms. This article discusses the context, possibilities, and limitations of Nassirian's one-man crusade to launch a "national" theatre based on indigenous roots, especially at a historical moment when Iran--at the brink of entering a new socioeconomic phase which we may call the "South" social formation--was forced to adopt a hurried, hence "lopsided," version of North Atlantic modernity in the form of statist modernization programs. Behzad Ghaderi Sohi is an associate professor of dramatic literature at Erciyes State University, Kayseri, Turkey (since February 2012) and was formerly a senior lecturer at the University of Tehran, Iran. He has taught and published on Ibsen, British (Romantic and postmodern), and American as well as Iranian drama and theatre. He is also a noted translator of plays into Persian. Masoud Ghorbaninejad is currently pursuing a PhD in English at Northeastern University, Boston, Massachusetts. Since the mid 1950s, when he first embarked on what was then an original idea, Ali Nassirian has been an ardent campaigner for establishing an Iranian "national" (1) theatre that could ideally nurture the writing and staging of dramas rooted in Iranian folk culture and its popular tradition of improvisatory performance. Based on research in progress (2009-2012) in which the possibilities and/or limitations for such a national theatre are explored, this paper locates Nassirian's artistic efforts at a historical juncture when Iran's still premature socioeconomic development became paralyzed by and, consequently, dependent on the political economy of the post-World War II West. The objective is to throw new light on an era in which a new generation of dramatists articulated the notion of a national theatre. The focus of the present article on Nassirian and the themes that emerge in his works is intentional in that, while he has proved to have a constant desire for change in his playwriting, directing, and acting style, his plays epitomize and are responses to the building tensions between national and international forces on political, economic, or cultural levels immanent at the time. Nassirian was born in 1935 into a working-class family in Tehran's Shahpur Square--a neighborhood known for its strong, communal values and particularly rich in popular culture. He started his artistic career in 1950 by playing minor roles in local plays and, by 1956, had earned a degree from Tehran Acting Conservatory. In the same year, he wrote his first two outstanding plays--Bolbol-e Sargashteh (2) (The Wandering Philomel) and Af'ee-ye Tala'ee (3) (The Golden Viper)--both of which embody his conscious attempts at reviving the indigenous performance-based theatre of old Persia. Soon he started directing as well as acting in his own plays and television scripts in addition to adaptations from Moliere, Chekhov, Shaw, Gogol, and Steinbeck, among others. In 1962 Nassirian went to the United States on a scholarship to further diversify his skills as a dramatist, (4) and a year later published his first, and subsequently revised and enlarged, collection of plays, Ketab-e Tamashakhaneh (The Book of the Playhouse; reissued 2005). In 1971 he had his first major cinematic experience as an actor with Dariush Mehrjui's world-acclaimed Gav (The Cow), which gradually led him to a prolonged career as a cinema and television celebrity. From 1975 to 1978, Nassirian served as the chair of the Theatre Office in the Ministry of Culture, where he made an attempt to superadd his new administrative power in order to set the foundation for his grand project. … |
