Sacred or Dissident: Islam, Embodiment, and Subjectivity on Post-Revolutionary Iranian Theatrical Stage

While the absence of public female performers in Iran prior to the twentieth century has often been linked to Islam and its restrictions on women, cross-dressing for the enactment of female roles—even for religious purposes—also has had its own antagonists, namely Islamic clergies and secular nationalists of the early twentieth century. The intrusion of female sexuality into the public space and onto the theatre stage (especially) after the unveiling of 1937 raised new moral issues in Iran, resulting in the association of female performing bodies with immorality, corruption, "eroticism" ( shahvat ), "prostitution" ( fahsha ), and "degeneration" ( ibtizal ). Informing the revolutionary discourse, these responses were largely instigated by the "enticing" image of the dancing subject of the popular entertainment scene of cabaret during the Pahlavi era (1926-1979). The postrevolutionary genre of "rhythmic movements" ( harikat-i mawzun ), however, introduced a new public dancing body, one whose corporeal characteristics are sublime enough to enact the narratives of Islam and the revolution.