The Commedia dell'Arte and Siah Bazi, Eastern and Western twins
"The possibilityà to follow the evolution of the theatrical forms of Persia is essentially denied us by the fragmentarietà and from the fortuitous nature of the news, concerning the various aspects of popular theater [...] The scholar, therefore, remains if ever only the modest task of establishing the verisimilitude of an existence of different theatrical genres in this or that era, and to ascertain which of them have continued up to our times "
G.Scarcia
The common boundaries between Siah Bazi and Commedia dell'Arte
Usually, the first thing that is thought of the Commedia dell'arte is that it is a genre populated with masks that grimace, fall in love, beat themselves, and always wearing the same costumes. The use of the term "Comedy" has reduced to one genre, the comic one, a broad repertoire, while the term "Art" seems an allusion to creativity. The two words have become an advertising logo, forgetting that with "comedians" one generically refers to those who practice theater, while "art" is synonymous with profession. So the label "Commedia dell'Arte" describes a vast field of experiences, which coincides with so much of the history of ancient spectacle. As we know, in the comedy of art, the actors, instead of memorizing pre-established jokes, improvise on stage, following the rules of what is today called acting recitation.
The actors of the Commedia dell'Arte were characterized by excellent mimic skills, good gab, essential imagination and the ability to synchronize perfectly with the other actors on stage. These shows took place in the squares and streets, on simple boxes and also in the sunlight. Very often the actors referred to 'masks', or characters whose characteristics were known to most (Arlecchino, Pulcinella, etc.). To distinguish themselves from ordinary people, the actors wore masks, colorful costumes enriched with showy elements and it was not uncommon for them to use musical instruments to draw the attention of passers-by and give rhythm to the improvised scenes on the spot. Over time, the actors organized themselves into companies which, made up of ten people (eight men and two women), were led by a manager. In particular, the presence of women on stage was a real revolution: before the birth of the Commedia dell'Arte, in fact, female roles were played by men. Popular theater in Iran was born in the form of comedy (tamāshā) or farce (maskhare) and mimetic imitation (taqlīd) in Siah Bazi or Ru howzi, however it is impossible to indicate the precise date of its appearance. We know that the dramatic art was already known in Persia before the conquest of Alexander and that, in the courts of ancient Persia, until more recent times, there were buffoons / entertainers, as well as storytellers mentioned above. Certainly it is from the Safavid period (1501-1722) that we find evidence of popular theater.
On the occasion of special occasions such as weddings or circumcisions, in the middle of the night, in private homes, traveling companies of musicians and dancers were hosted who presented a repertoire consisting of ballets, mime or dance and farces pièces. It is a theater of collective improvisation on canvases, generally based on a type of character: the bald, kachal, the black servant, siyāh, the teacher, fokoli, the woman, khanom, the servant, kaniz, the Jew, yahud and above all the grocer, baqqal, who will give life to a genre destined to become very famous: the grocer's game (baqqāl-bāzī), based on the events of a rich merchant in the relationships he has with his customers and his employees. The themes touched upon in these shows, based primarily on imitation / caricature of key characters, drew on familiar topics such as domestic quarrels, conflicts between lovers, and relationships between rich and poor.
Taqlīd, tamāshā and maskhare, quite indistinguishable from each other, will actually be the seeds that will give life to a much more defined genus such as Takht howzi, a name that defines its location. In the first chapter it was mentioned that Takht means bed and howzi basin. Also on the occasion of ceremonies or weddings, the courtyards of the houses became the stage for the actors through a series of wooden benches / beds arranged above the basins. It is with the Takht howzi that the popular comedy was composed of a mixture of pantomime, dance, song and dialogue in dialect. We also moved on to the decoration and accessories: a carpet served as a backdrop, the costumes and make-up were minimalist, the audience gathered in a circle around the stage. An average performance included a musical prologue with a number of animals, acrobats and jugglers followed by a pantomime and one or more farces. The theme, linked to everyday life, often alluded to local situations and known characters. They mocked the mullahs, the injustice of the judges, the perfidy of women, the dishonesty of the traders. We see exactly how in the commedia dell'arte the text was improvised on the basis of a canvas (in Persian “Noskhe”) and updated according to the place and circumstances. The artists were professional dancers and singers who traveled in company. We know that Canovaccio is a particular way in the commedia dell'arte. The canvas provided the track on which the actors' theatrical improvisation developed. Large collections of canvases of the commedia dell'arte have come down to us, published during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In fact, the plot of the canvas described in a very concise way the succession of scenes and the intertwining of events, with the sequence of the characters 'entrances and exits, providing a sort of reminder for the actors' improvisation work.
In this chapter, I will analyze and compare two Western and Eastern dramatic traditions: comedy of art and siah bazi. It is necessary to mention that siah bazi is considered as the oriental version of Commedia dell'Arte.
There are some common components between Commedia dell'arte and Siah Bazi, both in form and content:
- The theatrical craft, authorized to participate in trade
- Critique of society
- Improvisation
- Dishcloth
- Similarity between characters
- Similarity between the plots
- The primacy of the dramatic text over dramaturgy in action
There are also some differences:
- The participation of women in Siah Bazi was forbidden until the beginning of the twentieth century, while in the commedia dell'arte women acted from the sixteenth century.
- The Commedia dell'Arte usually performed during the Carnavale, while Siah Bazi performed only in special celebrations, such as weddings and circumcisions.
Commedia dell'arte and Siah Bazi as a trade
In Italy, before the actors began to join in 'art companies', the shows were of a completely different type: acrobats, charlatans, storytellers who performed in fairs or markets, or during the carnival. Or it was about comedies or tragedies that educated amateurs (that is people who did not live in the profession of actor) put on stage trying to revive the Greek and Latin theater. Sometimes the artists were jesters or buffoons, who lived in the different courts and coincided with their character not for the duration of a show, but for their entire life. In the mid-sixteenth century, people from different social backgrounds and with different specializations began to come together to give life to more complex shows, which were not supported by donations and could be bought, not only by the aristocracy but also by a less wealthy audience, through the sale of entrance tickets. It was a great revolution, both technical and social: it guaranteed the people of the theater a dignified life and forced them to develop a new way of working on stage. The birth and development of theater (as we understand it today) are not only the result of a dialectical relationship between authors and actors or even the definition of direction, but above all of that between professional and amateur actors. Until the first half of the sixteenth century there were no accredited acting models. Intellectuals or courtiers who staged comedies were looking for a role model as much as the first professional actors. The situation began to change with the foundation, towards the middle of the sixteenth century, of the first theater companies that suddenly resorted to acting. This type of show immediately met with public favor. Academic actors who staged regular plays and tragedies could request the assistance of professional actors. In the following century, in particular in Rome, the private theater in which the gods acted specialized in "ridiculous comedy", which did not want to act as a form of spectacle that was suddenly antagonistic to comedy, but which knew within it the not secondary practice theatrical by artists such as Gian Lorenzo Bernini and Salvator Rosa.
The professional actors tried to stand out, to establish an opposition between the professional practice of the commedia dell'arte and the search for another way of theatrical proposals. The famous definition of "art comedians" was coined in the eighteenth century by professional actors to distinguish themselves from academics, courtiers and students who acted. "Arte" means trade, corporation, and soon distinguishes actors from charlatans, who in addition to acting extemporaneously, live products that sell to the public, where the "art comedian" is paid for his acting; so writes the "Frittellino" Pier Maria Cecchini in the 1621: "Fiorenza [...] has placed this exercise in the number of other necessary arts, where that can not represent any in the entire State of Tuscany, if it is not written before, or master, or boy, nor can Governor, or minister, [...] prevent any comedies from being registered at that office, where all the other professions are. "
Only after the recognition that acting is a profession, a trade, perhaps with the rules and limits imposed by the civil or ecclesiastical power, could the figure of the amateur theater be defined in opposition to it. On the other hand, on the other side in Ruhowzi actors and reciters had no idea about the theater profession. In Safavi's time these comedians didn't even know Ru Howzi could be called theater. The definition of a profession for an actor in both Ta'zie and Ru Howzi at that time was impossible. We cannot divide the actors in Iran between professionals and amateurs, as in Italy, as they were not aware of artists or a theater company. In the Qajar era, the first theater companies and professional actors were defined. Most of the actors in these periods had other professions, such as businesses or small commercial businesses. In the early twentieth century the actors of Ru howzi moved into the halls, maintaining a minimalist scenography (a curtain as a backdrop) but enriching their repertoire with very different themes: historical or epic, mainly drawn from Ferdowsi's Shah-Name but not only, (Bijan and Manije, Khosrow and Shirin, "Moses and the Pharaoh", Joseph and Zoleykha, Harun al-Rashid), related to daily life (Haji Kashi and his son-in-law, Haji the column of the mosque, Holu's marriage, The shopkeeper and his wife) or concerning the religious or folkloristic imaginary (Sheykh San'an, The four dervishes, Now rooz Piruz, The sword of Solomon, Pahlavān Kachal).
In the mid-1800s, practiced mostly by women of the bourgeoisie, there was a genre of female theater, performed only inside the houses, for an audience of women who sat on the floor sang softly and clapped their hands rhythmically when the stage action required it. The main themes were marital infidelity and the marriage of the husband with a second wife, even if erotic themes were not lacking later on.
However, Siah Bazi continued unstoppable its production, satisfying the cultural needs of the lower strata of the population but also of the petty bourgeoisie. The issues addressed drew on the lifestyle of the urban petty bourgeoisie, with its family relationships, various marital betrayals but, even more interestingly, the joke of the representatives of the privileged classes and the criticism of the negative sides of the petty bourgeoisie. A famous company was that of Mirza Hosein Mo'ayyad from Tehera, made up of amateur actors, artisans and small traders who practiced their profession during the day and acted in some rented premises in the evening, while in the summer they left Tehran to give reruns in the various villages in occasion of celebration. Mo'ayyad drew up a script in which then all the members of the company participated in completing it, further elaborating it together. On the other hand, an extremely topical skit is of the female companies, which hints at a criticism of Europe, namely that of the "dude" who derides the doormen of Tehran, children of the aristocracy and large traders, who have assimilated the external forms of Western culture and do everything to imitate Europeans in their ways and dress. Therefore it can be said in the second half of the nineteenth century, at the same time as the Qajar era, professional companies of the Ru Howzi were founded, even if the presence of amateur actors still continued.
La maschera
The mask is considered one of the constituent elements of the Commedia dell'arte the term is used to identify the characters from the mid-eighteenth century: Molinari hypothesizes that the mask was a non-primary instrument. A large group of characters is unprepared, the masquerade seems to belong to a lost past, and works as a nostalgic reminder at parties, carnivals and in the professional theater of 800 and 900; the material that stylizes the face and moves the actors away from reality, will be appreciated by the romantic theater and by the twentieth century avant-gardes. It was also the eighteenth-century design by Carlo Gozzi who resorted to masks opposing himself to Goldoni who had set them aside. In Gozzi's Fairy Tales, the use of the mask does not refer to a still-practiced job description, but commemorates an endangered tradition. Already in the 600, amateurs and academics had assigned to those guys a greater role than it had among the comic mercenaries. This deformed filter has strengthened over time, emphasizing the importance of masks.
Mario Apollonio saw in the masks a diabolical disguise. Many spectacular forms had prolonged their existence from the Middle Ages to the modern age, preserving anachronistic masks: Pantalone's tights and cape, the Captain's uniform, the Harlequin costume. The mask is a remnant of an ancient show, formalized by the actors of the Commedia dell'Arte because it is able to seduce the spectators of the Ancient Regime.
The mask evokes a boundary between terrain and otherworldly life and death, themes that will occupy a lot of space in the scenes of the century. In the 600, inside courtly parties, the mask enjoys widespread luck. The replication of the use is accompanied by a secularization of the scenic object. The passage of theater forms into the academic repertoire thinned the diabolical thickness of the masks. The parodic digradation of the Art Theater ends up smoothing the diabolical traces encrusted on the black prosthesis, which becomes a simple prop of the scene.
The comedy mask or comedy of art is always known with the mask. In fact, the mask is an identity in the world of Italian comedy. The characters are the masks: each actor represents one. Each mask has a repertoire of jokes that characterize it; for example, typical of Dr. Balanzone are the tiritere, endless senseless rhetoric, while Captain Spaventa performs in the smargiassate, shooting big lies on his adventures. Each mask, then, plays a role: for example, Pantalone is the old grouchy, Arlecchino the sly servant, Balanzone the boring and pedantic pedantic, Colombina the smart and cheerful servant. One of the most important innovations introduced by the Commedia dell'Arte is in fact the presence on stage of the women acting. They are often very beautiful women, richly dressed and rigged, who, as the philosopher and theologian Francesco Maria del Monaco wrote in 1621, devise their words to give a feeling of softness, their gestures to produce lasciviousness, the signs to make them impudent, dances and dances to give the impression of lust. It is clear, in these words, the condemnation of the Commedia dell'Arte: according to the Church's thought, the actresses, by their way of acting, contaminate the purity of the woman, the cornerstone of the Christian conception of the family and of society. Each company is composed of two servants (the so-called Zanni), two old ones (the so-called Magnifici), a Captain, two lovers and some other minor roles.
The Zanni are the servants, already present in the classical scene and then in the renaissance scene, which give life to all the intrigues of the comedies. They are divided into two main categories: the First and the Second Zanni. Primo Zanni will give life to the figure of the clever servant and the Second Zanni to that of the silly servant. Both will take different names depending on the time and place. But if for Primo Zanni we will have a few variants among which the one of Brighella, for the Second Zanni we will have many, for example, among the most famous, Arlecchino and Pulcinella. Between the parts of the Magnificent (the parts of the old) the two main ones are those of Pantalone and the Doctor. These are ridiculous roles, which trigger the comedy from the contrast between the seriousness of the character and his behavior, so to speak, not very serious, or bully and in any case not suitable for age and role.
The Captain is the military bully and fool, similar to the Miles Gloriosus of Plautus. Among the most famous Captains there is Capitan Spaventa (otherwise called Capitan Fracassa or Scaramuccia). Those of the two lovers are usually secondary but indispensable roles for the involvement in the representation of the main parts and for the unfolding of the plot. Lovers are the only actors in the company who act without a mask.
The famous masks of the Commedia dell'Arte:
-Harlequin
-Balanzone
-Capitan Fracassa
-Colombina
-Gianduja
-Meo Patacca
-Pantalone
-Pulcinella
-Stenterello
In Siah Bazi, unlike the commedia dell'arte, there is no mask. In the first chapter I explained the meaning of Siah Bazi: Siah means black, as the main servant puts on his face in black. Siah is equivalent to Harlequin in the commedia dell'arte. The zanni and their characteristics are found in the Siah in the figure of Ru howzi. For this reason, Ru Howzi also takes the name of Siah Bazi. Siah is a crafty servant who may appear naive, able to organize, deceive and advise. As already mentioned, the mask is not used in Siah Bazi, however, the relationships and plots are usually similar to those of the Commedia Dell'arte. We cannot imagine Ru Howzi without Siah, as he is the protagonist and a very popular character, that viewers are always waiting to see on stage. Siah mispronounces the words and always tries to annoy her master Haji (the Iranian version of Pantalone), a miserly old merchant and saver, who has a son or daughter in love. Siah's character probably has its origins in the slaves who were brought from Africa in the Middle Ages. These were dark-skinned and could not speak Persian fluently, and as a result were mocked. (As it happened to me, when in my first year of studies at Sapienza University some people laughed at me, because of my pronunciation when I spoke in Italian). For some reason, despite her accent and her attitudes, Siah is a very pleasant character and loved by the public. As already mentioned, in the commedia dell'arte, there are two types of zanni, while in Ru howzi, Siah represents both characters and their characteristics. Siah is foolish and wise, miserly or generous, serious and ridiculous, Arlecchino and Pulcinella, and even Brighella and Capitano. After the Soviet socialist revolution, some socialist artists believed that Siah represented the lower classes. In the history of Persian literature, there have always been crazy characters who could criticize the government without fear of being convicted and dying. Madness was the solution to escape from punishment and torture. In ancient tales we often find a jester in the king's court who tells the truth and jokes freely with bourgeois, aristocrats and courtiers. A famous Persian proverb says: "To tell the truth at first you should be crazy because crazy people don't have enough brains." In fact, madness and irony were a pretext to criticize and despise the bad guys, without suffering the consequences. Therefore Siah has wisdom and insanity within him, which is why he is so loved by people, as he says and does the things that people normally can't do. This ability makes Siah an essential member of Ru Howzi.
The costumes in Ru Howzi, unlike the Commedia Dell'Arte are not special and colorful for each mask. The attires in Siah bazi come from the society that the characters represent. For example Haji is a merchant and his customs reflect the merchant class in the eighteenth century. Today the costumes of the characters of Siah bazi are still those that were worn in previous centuries.
The woman on stage
The woman as an actress in Italy:
The woman on stage in Italy is the most important novelty of the sixteenth century, decisive for the formation of professional theater. It refers to the entry of female skills in the repertoire of professionals, of which there is no chronological certainty, and which gave the theater consistency and charm.
The actress woman also marked a stage in the history of costume, acquiring a civil personality, asking for respect for a job, it was noted as a constitutive element of a production process, despite the common opinion confined them to the rank of prostitutes. Under the theatrical aspect, the women had qualities of expressive subtlety, vocal timbre and movements that the transvestite actors did not have, and could also touch other registers besides the comic and the grotesque.
For many it was a matter of going from soloists to part of a company. To achieve this they pledged to win the consent of educated men: the rehabilitation passed through the emphasis of characteristics attributable to arts and crafts consolidated by good reputation, as it was for Vincenza Armani (1530-1569), who posed «the comic art in competition with the oratory »or Barbara Flaminia (before 1562-post 1584), engaged in the high genre of the tragedy.
It was Isabella Andreini who was the most able to sublimate body and acting with an accurate study of petrarchism verses; he then took care of relations with renowned intellectuals, of which he imitated the editorial strategies, through which he self-mythologized. The work was then continued by husband Francesco and his son Giovan Battista.
In the 1588 Mirtilla the actress recited as a nymph Filli, and in a scene torments a satyr and then abandoned, perhaps interpreted by Andreini himself. Like many Captains, the repertoire of this character, warrior and virile, built on scenes of ridiculous submission to female power, had to enhance the passions of the actresses.
Laments and delusions of abandoned women, even sung, were precious pieces of the transformation of professional theater, beyond or the idea of a Commedia dell'Arte made up only of comic lines. The scenes of madness included a strong metamorphism of the actresses, identified in animals or natural elements, capable of distorting the character. On the wave of madness, Isabella's recitation could abandon herself to an excursion of tones, with a corresponding gestural and mimic play. A madness led to the success Marina Dorotea Antonazzoni in art Lavinia (1539-1563) who had as rival Maria Malloni in art Celia (1599-1632): these solos, set in the plot, allowed the performers to act out, with gifts from the spectators .
Figurative documents of the seventeenth century favored this strategy, in the identification of actresses with divine or mythical characters. The pictorial taste absorbed the feminine scenic suggestions, the actresses-heroines occupied spaces relevant for their ability to express the passions of the staged myths. The works can be read as indirect sources of scenic poses. The monumental location favored the raising of their virtues to lasting fame. The Arianna painted by Fetti probably reproduces the features of Virginia Ramponi, interpreter of the Arianna of Monteverdi (1608). The disposition of the characters and the context are theatrical, on the kind of those of the Andreini. The actress is caught in the moment of suspension, before going down to the beach, in a song that rises or goes out. The clues of singing skills resurface.
Among clues such as this, it is worth mentioning the sacred representation La Maddalena by GB Andreini (1617) and Claudio Monteverdi. Musical conjectures can be advanced about the feminine monologues predisposed by Andreini in Il nuovo ricarcito Convitato di pietra, an abnormal text, full of memories to music. The theme of the Magdalene is documented by the engravings that accompany the different editions. A motif similar to the one in another work by Fetti entitled Malinconia, a painting that shifts the concrete staging of a figure with realistic features to its symbolic abstraction. The attitude is sensual, the wide yellow ribbon alludes to the state of courtesan, the tools hint at the professions. The face resembles Arianna di Nasso: full lips, exophthalmic eyes: the actress may have been the only model.
The documented closeness of the Mantuan painter with the Florentine actor, allows to identify in this figure the visual transcription of the moral project that Andreini assigns to the actress: public but virtuous, professional at the height of the major arts. The fusion of melancholy and sensuality return from the double nature of the Andreini staging. The truth hidden under appearances is possible thanks to the virtue of women actresses. The role of the Innamorata is relevant although often dominated by masks. From 1620 (with the Lelio bandito) we can talk about overturning the parts, with a prevailing of the woman.
Below the representative tale is a cathartic process that concerns the actors and the actresses: these are not interpreters of other people's bodies (characters), but themselves, endowed with a psychic depth that the figures of the Art had never exhibited.
-The woman as an actress in Iran:
The Iranian Feminist Movement started 150 years ago. In 1852, the Qajar government killed Tahereh Ghorratolein, the first leader of the feminist movement. Since that time, Iranian women have entered a new stage of life in a free society. In 1906, a revolution known as Mashrooteh was born in Iran: women independently supported Domestic Industries, establishing the Central Bank and creating Secret Communities and Publications, developing the One-Sided World and Progressive Ideals. The women of Pro-Liberty established the first girl schools and submitted their own special requests, such as: education, voting and banned polygamy, etc. In the form of newspapers, news and personal letters presented to Parliament. In the following years, during the first and second Pahlavi dynasty, these women fulfilled their demands, such as the right to vote, to divorce and to have surrogate children. Thus, the percentage of trained women increases and social contacts have developed. This progress continued until 1979, when the Iranian Islamic revolution took place. Women who had fought their hardest for victory and who had tried to realize their so-called rights of loss of women, thus eradicating the culture of the Patriarchate, were then forced to rebel against the imposed Islamic commitment. Thus began the third Iranian feminist swing. Now the goal (Hijab) was to be the symbol of the Islamic system for veiled women. Legislative and civic laws have been modified and formed in the form of Islamic advocacy. A conservative morality was imposed, and the rights that women had achieved with great difficulty were all discarded. The marital age for girls was reduced to thirteen and then to nine. The women's perspective on the issues was rejected. A large number of women were discharged from the office due to their wearing the wrong dress.
Theatrical activities began even before the beginning of the modern Iranian theater. These challenges in the theater have created a labyrinth. Most mulla were opposed to the presence of women on the scene. The Qajar government collaborated with Islamists and mullahs to prevent women from being actresses. But slowly, after the Mashroote (institutional) revolution, women managed to participate in the shows as actresses and singers. Ru Howzi was the first theater where women played the roles that men played before them. However, women were not allowed to act in Ta'zie and, even today, female roles are played by men, as it is a religious theater (the woman's voice is forbidden to sing in Islam).
As Beyzaie writes: “After the introduction of Islam in Iran, the first female actor, Azadeh, acted in the presence of King Sasani 1300 years ago. The king was called Tomb Bahram, known for his vast animal hunting (In Persian, tomb and zebra are translated with the word Goor) ”. This actress criticized the king in one of his performances, thus, she was killed according to the order of the king. Before Azadeh, there were few other female actresses of the Rhapsodi genre. The most famous of these was the wife of Ferdowsi, the legendary poet of Iran, whose poems were all recited by her. The Modern Theater was introduced to Iran in 1884 and continues to be staged alongside traditional Iranian dramas, all entirely male. As I explained, women at that time were not allowed on stage and were replaced with men. In fact, women weren't officially admitted to theaters until 1906, when the Iranian minister of culture received the license to start the Iranian comedy, which was later performed at the Grand Hotel. For a decade, Jewish, Turkish and Armenian actresses could be seen on stage. While this was a big step in the history of running women, however, only non-Muslim and non-Iranian citizens were allowed to participate, while no Iranian actress was ever admitted. As a result, the taboo of being on stage for Iranian women has never been eliminated. During the Mashrooteh revolution, liberals understood the impact of theater on society. As a result, theater has become one of the best means of training people by familiarizing them with modern properties. One of the concerns among the theater groups was the position of women in the home and their social positions. The theater groups took a look at women, through the Theater of Art, to attract their audience, strictly men, to review their behavior towards women and to help them realize women's rights. They managed, in this way, to allow an Iranian woman to set foot on the stage, for the first time in the history of Iran after Islam. He acted alongside male actors in the presence of an audience of 250 men in Le Mariage Forcé of Molière, whose form was performed in the Ru Howzi environment. The performance was held by the Armenian group at the Armenian school in Tehran.
It is important to mention that the Iranian Armenian Society has made their own masterpiece to raise the art of Iranian theater, whose efforts rest upon the whole of Iranian theater. Despite the agony and misery they endured, the women did not give up, but rather carried out their mission. This phenomenon continued until 1926, when the Iranian women's workers' group began, in which numerous female actors and singers participated. Subsequently, all women were brutally attacked by religious dogmatic and fanatical men. From 1932 onwards, women were gradually enabled to assume positions with respect to the theater in which their performances were applied. Thus, the Male Company was reluctantly sent back to its circle. Women were able to actively enter the Writing and Leadership Campus, having the opportunity to go to the Male Company and enjoy the vibrant wealth of women.
Iranian culture in Goldoni's works
Next to the east of the Turks was that of the Persians. Safavi's Persia (Iran) was on good terms with Europe, and Venice had repeatedly attempted to form an alliance with the Turks. The projects remained unheeded but the trade with the Persian empire was always held at high levels especially in terms of carpets. On the wave of the success of Turkish fashion in the eighteenth century, Persia also acquired a new cultural consideration and the booklets for music drew on its antiquity many stories and a slew of subjects. It is a time when they made their triumphal entry into the work Cyrus the Great, Darius the Great, Xerxes, Artaxerxes, Idaspe, Rossana, Astiage, Arbace, Croesus, Sardanapalus, Orimante, Tomiri, etc. This abundance of subjects and characters did not help to identify the Persians better in the panorama of the oriental peoples. For the Coronation of Xerxes by the Bolognese Giuseppe Felice Tosi, in the 1691, Turkish costumes were hastily established.
An attempt to make the Persian characters less conventional was done by Goldoni in his exotic trilogy called "Persian". The Persian bride (1735) Ircana in Julfa (1755) and Ircana in Ispehan (1756) written to defend against the attacks of that successful playwright that was Abbot Pietro Chiari, all dedicated to the Eastern worlds with tragedies such as Kouli Kan king of Persia e The death of Kouli Kan. In addition to the Persian trilogy, Goldoni wrote other tragicomedy of an exotic nature The Peruvian (1754) Dalmattina (1758) The beautiful wild of the Guiana (1758), all far from his true nature.
In the 1758, in presenting to his friend Gabriele Corent, The loves of Alexander the Great, Goldoni complained of forced inventions "The comedy is drinking a visa source, but some more fruitful rivulets do not suffer being touched (alludes here to ridicule the nobles and priests) so it is that exhausted the common sources, it is convenient that you turn to the east and that the spirits, bored of the truth, lead to desire or the surprising or the buffoon".
Controversy or rather bitterness? In these statements Goldoni expresses himself against the rebirth of that kind of fairytale and exotic theater that will shortly triumph with Carlo Gozzi and his dreamlike version of the Commedia dell'Arte.The love of the three melarance (1761) and above all the lucky one Turandot (1762), whose surreal and mysterious bizarre surpassed the borders of Italy and the century.
From the recited to the written in the Commedia dell'Arte
The lack of knowledge of the Goldonian debut deprives us of the final phase of the Commedia dell'Arte dramaturgy. The reformer obscured the youthful works of Art. His strategy succeeded in destroying the traces of apprenticeship among comedians: a repertoire of canvases, popular comedies and opera librettos written for the Venetian theaters, for the companies of Imer, Sacco and Medebach, up to the fifties of the eighteenth century . The reading of the editions desired by Goldoni is not different from that which can be applied to comic books: an extraction of the fossils of acting in the folds of the author's editions.
Already Luigi Riccoboni had revised the tradition, proposing the theme of the reform that had among the assumptions the reform of acting. An actor, he took care to denounce the evils of the trade in order to exonerate himself from any accusation and to construct the utopia of a reform that assumed moralistic characteristics in the work De la réformation du théatre (1743).
These theses do not correspond to the intelligence of the actor's other writings, such as the Histoire du Théatre Italien (1728-31), along with prejudices hostile to comedians who can not write in beautiful language, recalls some stages of his Parisian experience exposing the lines of his project for «a Comédie sagement conduite», in which the masks and acting were suddenly to be preserved. The next step is the overcoming of improvisation and of the actors in the mask, including Arlecchino.
This method will be emphasized by Goldoni, above all when writing the Parisian memories, the reference to Riccoboni's ideas was a guarantee of authority. Goldoni had not worried about it in his youth, while he was writing canvases and booklets, in which he had exploited the skills of many comedians and singers, deriving those genres that did not respect the French categories. He had surrendered to the demands of pure consumption.
The double nature of Goldoni, on one hand engaged in good literary taste, on the other impregnated with the stage experience, is evident in the Servant of two masters: "it was this comedy suddenly so well done that I was very pleased with it, and I have no doubt that they did not have it suddenly adorned with what I may have done by writing it. " Fundamental is the contribution of Antonio Sacco, who participated in the creation of many works by Goldoni and Gozzi. Observed from his point of view, the methods of the writers seem less distant than they have made their contemporaries believe. The contiguity between Gozzi and Goldoni is also a consequence of the collaboration with the same actors, in that community that was the Venice of time, and corresponds to an ancient stage practice: the Commedia dell'Arte is the unit of measure of both drama.
Goldoni wanted to subordinate some data of his work to the rules of beautiful literature, respecting the values of French Enlightenment reason, while expressing gratitude for his interpreters, to whom he devoted ample space. The redemption of comedians is the passport for ascension to the top of literary fame. Gozzi, was pleased to exhibit the collaboration with the comedians without charging it with meanings, merely showing the mechanical joints of the shows. from the sconomecnic effects to the acting sequences as in a scenario of the Commedia dell'Arte. There is the anxiety of cultural compensation that determines the frenzy of Goldoni, but that of those who would immobilize the world that is running too much. Professionals are commendable, according to Gozzi, because with their ancient profession they delude about a society that others want to set aside.
The look of Gozzi is retrospective and that of Goldoni realistic. This allows the conservative greater fidelity to the forms of tradition, which had characteristics that were exactly contrary to the aesthetics that the French assigned to the Commedia, and the task of occupying the lowest step. Reformism Gozzi rejects almost everything, in the name of a conservative ideology aware of a tradition still rich. Goldoni, while maintaining interests for different genres, marries the programs of French theorists, favoring his median repertoire.
Both resort to techniques, lazes of the Commedia. Goldoni translates the data of the material theater into literary text, while Gozzi exhibits them as such and in prints. With the cynicism of every avant-garde, Gozzi uses the actors, he expropriates the techniques; Goldoni instead associates them with his theatrical mission.
From improvisation to writing in the Ru Howzi
We have said that despite government censorship, religious rigor and public infatuation with new forms of entertainment, both traditional religious drama and comedies have continued to evolve to the present day, and modern Persian playwrights have drawn on them for their works.
The modern Persian drama had its beginnings in the nineteenth century, when educated Persians became familiar with Western theater. Students sent to Europe to acquire knowledge of Western technology are back with a taste for other aspects of Western culture, including theater. Before knowing the European theater, Ru Howzi took place following improvisation as in the Commedia dell'Arte Pre Goldoniana. There was no written text and the motreb did not memorize the dialogues, they only knew the plot and their recitation depended on the situation and the reaction of the public.
Persians and intellectuals in Iran got to know the theater through the translation of French and English operas. When the Iranians first met Shakespeare, Marlo and Molière in the mid-nineteenth century, playwrights did not yet exist in Iran. Pioneers such as Akhondzade and Mirza Agha Tabrizi learned to write a play after meeting great European playwrights. Western comedies were initially translated into Persian and performed for the royal family and courtiers in the first Western-style theater in Persia, and a few years later, they were brought to the next stage at Dar al-fonun (multi-technical school). The misanthrope Molière was the first of them, translated as Gozaresh-e mardomgoriz by Mirza Habib Isfehani (1815-1869) with much freedom in making the names and personalities of the characters, so that the show was more Persian than French. That is to say this show (brought to the scene in 1852) is the first Siah Bazi that uses the written text instead of improvisation. As already mentioned, the adaptation of the Persian drama was influenced by Western theater through the works of the reformist author and writer Akhondzade, whose works, written in Azerbaijan and published in a newspaper in the Caucasus in the 1851-56 stimulated Mirza Agha Tabrizi to try in the writing of plays in Persian. Written in the 1870, they were published under the title of Chahar theater (Four Comedies) in Tabriz, dealing essentially with government corruption and other social problems. It is very interesting to note that Tabrizi, inspired by Siah Bazi, had composed his comedies with elements of Western comedies. In this period we can see how Ru Howzi was entering the space of modern theater. Tabrizi, inspired by the masters like Shakespeare, Marlo, Molière, Ben Johnson, created the Persian dramaturgy based on national components with the structure of modern theater. We know that the first works that have been translated into Persian were Il merchant of Venice by Shakespeare, Scapino's mischief e Miser, Forced marriage of Molière and La mandrake of Niccolò Machiavelli.
Goldoni's first work to be translated into Persian dates back to 1889. The locandiera leads to the knowledge of Goldoni in the world of Persian comedy. Saltane, a noble intellectual who was building a Grand Hotel in Ghazvin at the time, intended to bring The Innkeeper to the stage of the same hotel, but given the protest from the mullahs (given the presence of a female actress, albeit a Russian), he gave up. to do it. Slowly and with increasing translation of Western plays, the new European comedy is known in Iran, representing a gold mine for groups of Ru Howzi. Thus was born an unprecedented relationship between Ru Howzi and western comedy, above all Commedia dell'Arte. In the following years, several researchers such as Beyzie or Kabian or Chelkovski wrote about the similarity between the Persian theatrical legacy with a root in Renaissance comedy. The traditional groups of Siah Bazi, without knowing the roots of the plots, have composed European comedies (particularly Moliere and Goldoni) with their noskhe. For some of them there was a proverb that said: "This noskhe comes from abroad (Farang)". Therefore the comedy of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries is considered the first dramaturgy written for Siah Bazi.