Shakespeare and the Islamic Republic of Iran: Performing the Translation of Gholamhoseyn Sa'edi's Othello in Wonderland

[...]while relatively unknown in America, Sa'edi remains one of the most important modern Iranian writers of his generation, the author of over thirty plays (written in Iran before the Islamic Revolution and in self-imposed exile following the political change in the country), as well as severa...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The Theatre annual 2011-01, Vol.64, p.86
Main Author: Sedarat, Roger
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Actors
Audiences
Censorship
Culture
Drama
Dramatists
Islamic law
Martyrs
Politics
Shakespeare, William (1564-1616)
Theater
Translation
Translations
Writers
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Summary:[...]while relatively unknown in America, Sa'edi remains one of the most important modern Iranian writers of his generation, the author of over thirty plays (written in Iran before the Islamic Revolution and in self-imposed exile following the political change in the country), as well as several novels, short stories, and children's books.3 Second, this particular play offers one of the best depictions of tension arising between an autonomous literary work and government censorship in Iranian theatre.4 Though various cultural allusions in this play are readily grasped by Iranians, a western audience might misunderstand certain references as well as political implications in a performance of an English translation. First translated into Persian by the playwright,22 they are re-translated back into English by Michael Phillips, only to get replaced with Shakespeare's original English by his graduate advisor who completed the translation.23 Underpinning the aforementioned east/west divisions are even more canonical texts, Aristotle's Poetics and the Qur'an, interpretations of which are staged to show the effect of competing foundational discourses. Yes, my own dear father referred to this matter. Since the time of its publication was before our beloved Islam, it is among the forbidden books, and reliance on it is not lawful.25 The Islamic Minister goes on to counter-propose the following three principles of Islamic drama, because, as he explains, "our drama, like our revolution, must be exported to every part of the world": 1. The very misunderstandings depend at times upon sufficiently shared Iranian cultural experiences among all performers on the stage, even as they struggle for the power to interpret Shakespeare's play. Because the character of Othello remains on the obverse side of what ultimately becomes, in an English translation and performance, the same intertextual coin, he offers a way to highlight for audience understanding the division between Aristotelian aesthetics and censorship in the Islamic government.
ISSN:0082-3821