Description
Despite its decline in the West, absurdist theatre enjoys a vibrant afterlife in Iran, where avant-garde theatre merges with culturally embedded affects of mourning and waiting. This project examines the consistent stream of absurdist theatre adaptations in Iran, focusing on how its form reflects socio-political complexities while serving as an index of self-definition. Aiming at an innovative framework for analysing the political and cultural potentiality of absurdism in adaptation, I hypothesize that these works use allegory to express fragmented realities, enabling defiance under censorship while implicating spectators through interpretative multiplicity. By analysing key adaptations of Beckett, Ionesco and others from the 1970s onwards, the study explores the interplay between formal and dramaturgical techniques and absurdist aesthetics, highlighting how allegory serves as a vehicle for both hope and critique. Objectives include (1) conducting a formal analysis locating allegory and its plenitude of references, (2) contextualising absurdist allegory as indicative of the world it emerges from, (3) comparing pre- and post-revolutionary trends to reveal evolving cultural identities and self-definitions. Combining formal and sociocultural analysis, and employing a Benjaminian lens, the project uncovers how Iranian adaptations navigate restriction and resistance. It proposes understanding absurdism and allegory as disruptive forces with a renewed political potential.| Period | 3 Mar 2025 |
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| Held at | FWO - Fundamental Research, Belgium |