آزادی خلاقانه؛ شگردهای مدیریتی گروه‌های تئاتر ایرانی در مقابله با سانسور

Since the very beginning of the emergence of western-style theater in Iran in the 19th century, the existence of this new art has been tied to censorship. The first theatrical activities in Iran before the occurrence of the constitutional revolution in the years 1905–1911 were limited to the publication of Iranian plays and the translation of foreign plays. Mirza Jafar Gharachedaghi, when translating the collection of plays by Mirza Fatali Akhundov (Akhundzadeh), the first Iranian playwright who wrote his works in Tbilisi and in Azeri Turkic, changed the names mentioned in these plays so that the anger of famous people whom the author had criticized would not cause trouble for the translator. With this, we can see that with the publication of the first Iranian modern play, censorship and self-censorship were also born in Iran, or at least became official. Since that date, i.e., since 1873 AD, various types of censorship, self-censorship, and, of course, avoiding censorship have existed in Iran in different forms, both officially and unofficially, and they did not completely disappear in any periods. From the first amateur Iranian theater troupes in the pre-constitutional era (1911) such as Farhang Theater and National Theater to troupes with a regular repertoire in the post-constitutional era such as Iran Comedy, Nakissa Theater and Barbod Theater, to the professional theater troupes and companies in the Pahlavi era (1925 to 1979) such as the Ferdowsi Theater, the National Art Troupe and Theater Workshop and even the huge number of so-called registered troupes after the Islamic Revolution (1979), all have been struggling with the phenomenon of censorship and of course self-censorship and on the other hand escaping from censorship, and many forms of theater censorship in Iran continue to oppress artists to this day. Since the first theater production in Iran, religious censorship has been the main form of censorship in Iranian theater, along with government censorship and, of course, self-censorship. After the Islamic Revolution and with the rise of religious clerics, these forms of censorship became more intense. During World War II and the Anglo-Soviet invasion of Iran in 1941 and the establishment of the Communist Party of Iran (Tudeh), ideological censorship was added to other types of theater censorship in Iran, and official and unofficial parties still use different methods to censor competing ideologies. Numerous political and social events in Iran, including the constitutional revolution and the Islamic revolution, did not have a significant impact on increasing freedom of expression in Iran, and as a result, creative freedom and dealing with censorship became the main forms of artistic expression in Iran. Since the early years, theater troupes in Iran have used several strategies in their organizational and management structure to deal with and fight against censorship, such as performing theater secretly, recruiting members instead of selling tickets, or cyber performances in recent years. In this article, by examining the management of prominent theater troupes in Iran, we will recognize the strategies that these troupes used to counter censorship.