Theatrical Adaptation of Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People in Iran: The Intellectual and Modernity in Akbar Radi’s The Decline

Abstract

The drama of Henrik Ibsen has been very influential in promoting social and realistic playwriting in Iranian theater since its introduction in the early twentieth century. Ibsen’s topoi of dysfunctional family connections, the woman question, enlightenment, to name a few have had a lasting impact on modern Iranian dramatists. In her study of Ibsen in Iranian theater, Farindokht Zahedi (2006) traces the arrival of the Norwegian playwright in Iran to the performance practice of Armenian troupes in northwestern Iran in the early twentieth century, particularly that of Hovans Abelian (1865–1936), who staged An Enemy of the People in Armenian in the city of Tabriz in 1909 to both Armenian and Iranian audiences. In a short span of time, Ibsen gained considerable prominence among Iranians and by the 1940s his plays were translated to and staged in Persian across the country, especially in the cities of Tabriz, Tehran, and Isfahan. A primary reason behind Ibsen’s warm reception among Iranians is that Ibsen’s social drama could offer Iranian playwrights and theater producers a critical engagement in the “cultural and social circumstances” of their contemporary society (May 1985, 30). This Iranian reception coincided with a faltering economy and poverty as the result of dramatic changes in civil and political structures. A significant factor in cultural change