Theater, Language and Inter-Ethnic Exchange: Assyrian Performance before World War I

In: Iranian studies, Band 40, Heft 4, S. 501-510

Abstract

The Assyrian "Camelot" in Iran, centered in northwest Iran around the towns of Urmia and Salamas, began with a surprise championship of their community by American missionaries and ended with ethnic cleansing between 1914 and 1918. During the eighty odd years of intellectual and material progress made in this community, Assyrians not only learned a multiplicity of European languages within a generation, but adopted western genre of entertainment on a broad scale. Among these were theater performances. Assyrian plays drew on many sources including French and Azerbaijani plots. But plays also became a means of retrieving their own historical past as it was being revived in Europe in the late nineteenth century under the influence of archeology and related classical sources on Mesopotamian and Iranian ancient history. In addition, Assyrians drew on another source of inspiration for theatrical performance, a source buried deep within their own medieval culture. To what extent does church theater performance soften attitudes toward theater in an environment where American-inspired religiosity frowned on frivolities like stage entertainment? To what extent does the Assyrian experience mirror the production of theater in Qajar culture in general? How, if at all, has the Assyrian cultural flowering, however brief, affected the encouragement of diverse entertainment in northwest Iran?