ABSTRACT
Since its early days in the 1850s, modern Iranian drama has been the unacknowledged bastion of experimentation, where many of the forms and ideas propagated later through poems, novels and cinema originated. One reason for this function lies in the fascination of the Iranians with theatre as a communal space during their first visits to Europe, which led to their attempt to import the form into Iran’s literary tradition and the first departures from indigenous concepts of literariness so that drama became the first to promote the evolving cultural discourses on modern identities. Iranians had ta’ziyeh passion plays and taqlid improvisatory comedies. 1 They also occasionally used both for topical subjects. But the level of social realism in Western-style drama and its focus on everyday life was new to them.
