ABSTRACT

A NUMBER OF CRITICS have argued that the theatre emerged out of ritual. According to these critics, if a ritual becomes a performance to be only observed and not participated in, the ritual becomes theatre. In other words, participating and believing are recognized as the two most important elements in distinguishing ritual from theatre. I personally believe that the Ta′ziyeh is theatre, but that it has managed, at the same time, to keep the ritualistic elements of participation and belief in its performances. That is why I have identified the Ta′ziyeh in this book as a ritualistic form of theatre.1 It has been mentioned that the Ta′ziyeh was developed from ritualistic processions of mourning for the martyrs of the Karbala. These ceremonies took place mainly in the open air. Thus, as an art form connected with ritual and with open spaces, the Ta′ziyeh was originally able to establish a very close relationship between performers and spectators. However, this primitive yet powerful style of interaction necessarily changed as the performances became more elaborate and moved into the closed spaces. Unlike Western theatre, which lost its openspace qualities when it moved indoors and became imprisoned behind the proscenium arch, the Ta′ziyeh was able to keep its ritualistic qualities and even imposed its own style upon the architecture of the playhouse, transferring its open-space quality into the closed space of the playhouse.