The Theatre of the Oppressed in Tehran: Dilemma of Ethics and Engagement

Abstract:The Theatre of the Oppressed (TO) of Tehran, established in 2008, has been one of the few groups ardently practising applied theatre despite all the ideological and governmental limitations. This essay focuses on the TO of Tehran's community projects through the lens of ethics and engagement. The nature of TO-Teh's social engagement in the context of Iran is new, yet conservative; innovative, yet cautious. This brings out the question of the ethics of community theatre:How are ethics reinterpreted and morphed in a particular social condition in which the practitioner does not feel free enough to excavate the issue at hand? Applied theatre in communities underwritten with interiorized censorship and control finds a dual function; on the one hand, the bestowed freedom serves to boost social engagement; on the other hand, this engagement is filtered by dominant social norms and decrees.