ABSTRACT
THE ISLAMIC DRAMA of Iran is known as Ta′ziyeh1 or Shabih.2 It is a drama enacting the suffering and death of Imam Hussein, grandson of the Prophet of Islam. In 680 AD he was massacred along with his family in the plain of Karbala near Baghdad by the soldiers of Yazid, the Caliph.3 This drama was described by the distinguished theatre director Peter Brook as ‘a very powerful form of theatre’4 when he first saw a Ta′ziyeh performance in 1970 in a village in the north of Iran. Many theatre critics, such as David Williams, claim that it was the Ta′ziyeh that ‘had fired his [Brook’s] imagination’5 for future experimental productions such as Orghast and Conference of Birds.
