The result of collaborative research from noteworthy dramatists and scholars, this volume investigates the dynamic relationship between culture, performance and theatre in Iran. The studies gathered here examine how various forms of performances, especially theatre, have and continue to undergo change in response to shifting political and social settings from the antiquity to the present day. The analysis in this book focuses on performance practices, examining drama, texts, rituals, plays, music, cinema and drama technologies. This is done in order to show how Iran has been imagined through enactments and representations, and reproduced through these performative actions. The book uses a wider definition of the concept of 'performance', offering analysis of a wide range of phenomena, including indigenous rituals – such as the naqqali and taziyeh – and online performances by diaspora communities.

Babak Rahimi is Associate Professor of Communication, Culture and Religion at the University of California, San Diego, USA. He is the author of Theater State and the Formation of Early Modern Public Sphere in Iran: Studies on Safavid Muharram Rituals, 1590-1641 C.D. (2011), and co-editor of Social Media in Iran (2015), The of Wiley Blackwell History of Islam (2018), Muslim Pilgrimage in the Modern World (2019).