Mutual Deception and Disguise

Abstract

The Iranian theatre practitioner is always already part of an ongoing investigation, and they have to negotiate different notions of deception. They constantly undertake strategies to deceive and distract censors from their art while revealing it to their audience. To do so they bargain various components of their work with the censorship authorities. On the other side of the table, the censorship regulations for guiding the authorities are vague. One can best describe the censorship system as multiple layers of authority, each in fear of the other. Those who have to decide on a piece before it goes on stage can never be certain if they would face consequences from higher authorities. Therefore, much of what goes on in negotiations between the artist(s) and her censor is improvisatory, face to face, and on the spot. It is in part both the imagination of the artists and the censors that finally settle on a version of the performance. Censorship can be understood as a complex process that does not necessarily put an end to that which it is trying to regulate. This article theorizes censorship as a negotiation between the artist and her censor. It studies different strategies that artists utilize for the survival of their work such as creating a coding and decoding system in their art. It shows how these strategies contributed to the creation of unique, complex, and fluid works of art.

Notes

1 In the nineteenth century, new genres of popular music, new genres of comedic plays and more importantly the first class of Muslim women actresses all came out of the lineage of Muharram performances. By that time, women had the front seats in the theatres dedicated to Muharram ta’zieh plays. This means that while many of these chances of self-expressing performances in the seventeenth-century Muharram ceremonies would end after the celebrations, and the ‘norm’ would come back to the public urban spaces, those performances had affected the public sphere(s) years or centuries later. Peter Burke makes an interesting argument about the connection between these public performances and protest. Burke says:

[T]o move from the point of view of the authorities to that, more elusive, of ordinary people, it may well have been that some of those excluded from power saw Carnival as an opportunity to make their view known and so bring about change. (Rahimi 2012: 282)

One can also add that disguised carnivalesque performances of seventeenth-century Iran had a privilege over protests in survival. As protests are organized performances with a specific goal, people need to gain a certain degree of public access to organize a protest. Moreover, authorities can more easily attack and dismantle protests, as they are easier to identify. But the subversive characteristics of these performances cannot easily be identified. Therefore, disguised performances can act as a powerful tool for change.