Book:"The Status of Traditional Plays in Contemporary Theatre of Iran"(2002)

Abstract:
The Iranian traditional plays gained a new impetus and were further developed and popularized in the Safavid and Qajar periods, due to government support and public warm welcome and appreciation. They manifested themselves in three general forms: Happy Plays, Sad Plays (Tazieh) and Puppet shows.
As these plays were not based on literature(Unlike "Naghali" which was the first and simplest theatrical form based on epic and religious texts and which gave way to" Tazieh")and were inspired through improvisation, no written materials or play scripts were left behind. On the other hand, through passage of time, as the western civilization found its way through the society, such theatrical forms failed to adapt with new circumstances and as a result began to fade gradually especially because they no longer enjoyed public and state support.
Therefore, conducting such detailed research on Iranian plays in an attempt to gain a thorough understanding of its principles is a difficult time-consuming task with many barriers ahead, since its strings to the past have been broken and the sources are scarce and dispersed. However the writer of the thesis (290 pages) was very concerned about the subject and felt the need to conduct the research, she started the challenge to collect the most authentic sources in various forms such as books, articles, theses, etc in order to identify the principal elements of theatrical forms and classify them as much as possible. While taking a comprehensive look over 134 years of playwriting in Iran the writer has been looking for those playwrights who have had a major role in refreshing and reviving the elements of Iranian traditional plays and have spared no efforts to direct traditional plays towards national theatre. To accomplish the above mentioned task and to identify the elements and ingredients in traditional plays and the way they could be incorporated into contemporary play scripts, seven writers and 12 works have been chosen as the basis of the present research.
The thesis was presented by Farideh Shirjian for degree of master of art in Art Studies at Tarbiat Modarres University and Supervisor of the thesis has been Mohammad Reza Khaki, and then the thesis was chosen as Top Researcher 2000 and finally published called "The Status of Traditional Plays in Contemporary Theatre of Iran" in 2002.