Pre-Cinema in Iran

The oldest form of performance is the festive dances and the practice of adulation rites, which can be considered as the origin of group performances. Little by little, narrators of the stories of courageous heroes and ancient mythical legends started to act out the characters’ actions, in hunts, battles or other such adventures, to captivate and keep the audience. They tried to convey the concept and the image to their audience by dramatizing, using masks and adding expressive gestures to words, and that was how the performing arts grew and expanded. This form of narration continued in two forms of Naghali and Vaghe’e-Khani which were practiced in villages and city squares, and also in army camps between the battles to motivate the soldiers.

Naghali is the art of narrating a story or a real life event in either verse or prose, using the corresponding gestures, expressions and dialogs to convey the story to the audience. In other words, the Naghal (narrator) tells the story with dramatic tone and expressions accompanied by a musical instrument (harp).

Epic and religious stories are the usual material of Naghali programs. The narrators have different styles of performed narration, including Pardeh-Khani or Shamayel-Gardani in which the narrator explains the paintings on a portable curtain to a group of listeners. 

In Pardeh-Khani, a Pardeh-Khan or narrator uses a large curtain with paintings on it to recite the depicted stories for the audience in a booming voice.

The paintings are done in realistic style with a lot of figures and faces but no perspective. Also, several stories are illustrated parallel to each other on the curtain. This style of painting is called “coffeehouse painting”, which is a type of imaginary painting.

This school of performing art was the backbone of the acting style in a new form of theatrical religious performance called Ta’zieh (Condolence Theater), which became popular in the recent centuries. Of course, one should not forget the three thousand year old mourning ritual of the people of Bukhara for the death of Siavash at the hands of Afrasiab. The post-Islam Ta’zieh was devoted to recounting the epic of Karbala, and it is still performed as a traditional religious ceremony to this day.