Iranian Theatre Today Another Look

Six researchers and well-known artists sketch an unpublished, hybrid image of the reality of Iran’s theatre scene, where permanent negotiations with the authorities and the city render theatre life both effervescent and complex. The first part of the day is taken up with theorizing on the socio-political workings of theatre spaces, supplemented in the second part by the artists’ concrete experiences.

Programme

First part

Intro

Karel Vanhaesebrouck

Between the center and the margin: emerging theatre spaces in Tehran

Azade Shahmiri

Azade Shahmiri is a theatre artist, researcher and senior lecturer. She works on her thesis entitled "The Representation of the "West" in the Iranian Dramatic Texts". Her interdisciplinary research in performing arts has been published as a book and several articles in different journals and reviews. Her theatrical work is based on research and narration. Her last creation, Damascus, is a performance-conference played in Tehran, Zurich and Gwangju.

Place and its social - historical functions in Iranian theater

Farzan Sojoodi and Misagh Nemat Gorgani

Farzan Sojoodi, linguist and semiologist, is professor of the Theatre Department at the Tehran University of Arts, former president of the Department of Semiotics at the Iranian Academy of the Arts and member of the Tehran Semiotic Circle. He has translated and drafted, amongst others, several publications and articles on semiotics in the field of theatre, art and literature. He has also directed theses and dissertations in the fields of performing arts, cinema, painting, photography and literature within a semiotic and linguistic scope.

Misagh Nemat Gorgani is PhD student in arts studies at the Isfahan University of Arts. His research focuses on the issue of the Iranian theatre's audience. He is currently working on his thesis called "The Social Critic of the Legitimate Taste of Tehran's Theatre Audience".

The Iranshahr Theater, the story of an Achilles’ heel

Mohammadamin Zamani

Mohammadamin Zamani is PhD candidate in performing arts at the Université Libre de Bruxelles and FNRS research fellow. He studies the spatial organization of today's theatre scene in Tehran and is co-founder and editor of Simia, a specialized journal in dramatic literature. He has been publishing in Persian and French on the relations of the Iranian Theatre with its sociopolitical context in different historical periods.

Second part

Iranian home, Iranian Identity on stage

Naghmeh Samini

Naghmeh Samini, playwright, scriptwriter and journalist, is also professor and member of the scientific committee at the Theatre Department of the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Tehran and affiliate professor at the University of Washington (UW). She is one of the most frequently performed Iranian contemporary playwrights. She researched and published about the dramatization of oriental myths and legends, more specifically the One Thousand and One Nights.

Experience of space (a discussion with Mohammadamin Zamani and Azade Shahmiri)

Amir Reza Koohestani

Amir Reza Koohestani is stage director and playwright, and surely the best known and worldwide presented iranian theatre maker. Among his plays which made his international reputation, we can find Dance on Glasses (2001), Recent experience (2005), Amid the Clouds (2007), Timeloss (2013).

Partners: Kunstenfestivaldesarts, La Bellone, Cifas, Research Group THEA, ULB, ReSIC (Centre de Recherche en Information et Communication).