Eternal Performance: Ta'ziyeh and Other Shiite Rituals (review)

Eternal Performance, edited by Peter J. Chelkowski, presents twenty-four chapters discussing the Shi'a religious theatre and related rituals. The book can be read as a follow-up on earlier works edited by Chelkowski, namely, Ta'ziyeh: Ritual Drama in Iran (1979) and The Drama Review (2005). The former of these works offered the first comprehensive presentation of studies on the Shi'a religious theatre with special attention to the theatre's Iranian cultural heritage and relation to Twelver Shi'ism. Sixteen chapters of Eternal Performance have been previously published in The Drama Review, while some others have been published elsewhere. There are, however, some contributions which have been especially written for the volume and which appear for the first time.

The strength of Eternal Performance lies in introducing a wide range of approaches to, and debates in, the study of the Shi'a religious theatre and related rituals. It is impossible in this review to give due attention to the depth of information and analysis presented in each chapter.

Instead, I will highlight the book's extensive range of topics, which makes it an important contribution to the study of ta'ziyyah, Shi'ism, religion, performance and visual arts, ritual and politics, ritual and identity formation and transformation, and gender issues.

In the first chapter, Chelkowski offers an introduction to the 680 AD battle of Karbala which is retold, re-enacted, and commemorated in the Shi'a religious theatre in Iran with the name ta'ziyyah. He explains how ta'ziyyah developed during the 1800s from other ritual forms, and describes its organization and performance traditions, the characteristics of stage, props, costumes, text, and the repertoire of episodes. Yet another topic he explores is how the ta'ziyyah has attracted the attention of Western theatre theorists. Chapter 2 gives a taste of the theatre as performance and commemorative ritual by presenting a script of the 'Ta'ziyeh of the Martyrdom of Hussein' collected by the Polish scholar Chodzko in the early 1800. The text is translated and introduced by Rebecca Ansary Pettys, who also describes the characteristics of the genre and its topics, and stresses its flexibility and fluidity. In the following chapter, Kamran Scot Aghaie discusses the origins of the sectarian Sunni-Shi'a divide, which resonates through every ta'ziyyah performance, and the emergence of the ta'ziyyah traditions evolving from older forms of rituals. Chapter 4 is a contribution especially written for this volume. Jean and Jaqueline Calmard offer a review of the Russian orientalist Ilya Nicolaevich Berezin's notes on the Muharram ceremonies he observed in Tehran in 1843. The chapter thus expands on the topic of ta'ziyyah productions in its early and formative years as observed by Western visitors to Iran.

Berezin made notes about staging, acting, costumes, language, performance halls, mourning practices, votive gifts, and, the authors suggest, probably offers the first account of women performing in ta'ziyyah plays represented in private settings. Berezin's remarks about themes outside the Karbala event being included in ta'ziyyah communicate with topics later discussed by Anwar and Mottahedeh in this volume. The fifth chapter is a reprint from The Drama Review.

William Beeman and Muhammad B. Ghaffari draw on first-hand studies of ta'ziyyah in Iran and Ghaffari's experience as a director, to discuss acting styles and actor training. They argue that the ta'ziyyah is continuously evolving because the performance is both expandable and contractible, that actors develop their individual styles, and that the genre is influenced from film. Chapter 6 is another original contribution. Muhammad Reza Khan, in a translation by Iraj Anwar, analyses the scenic space in traditional Iranian religious theatre and compares it to Western classical and modern theatre. I find of particular interest Khan's discussion of the subtle symbolic use of objects, speech, body language, and how the separation between performers and audience is blurred during...