Literary experts place the Shahnameh in the same category as other world epics such as the Iliad and Odyssey, which are attributed to Homer.
Theater experts believe that ancient Iranian myths and epics could be an excellent vehicle for promoting theater in the country due to their national characteristics.
Many world plays were based on old myths and epics and the secret of their success was the timing of their presentation.
Plays such as Medea, Antigone, Hamlet, Macbeth, and the Literary Man of Shahriyar were inspired by the historical stories of various nations.
Making use of Iran’s ancient stories will help playwrights write plays with good structure and national characteristics.
Since the ancient Greek era up to modern times, many playwrights have made use of such epics.
However, performances of translations of European plays only began in Iran one hundred years ago.
Several Iranian playwrights used to write plays inspired by Persian literary works, but this tendency declined gradually over the years and only few writers use this style nowadays.
The lack of long and short-term planning in theater, the popularity of Western plays, the general lack of interest in Iranian productions, the restrictions, improper education in playwriting, and inattention to research works are some of the reasons why the art of theater has not developed much yet in Iran.
Masterpieces like the Shahnameh and the Masnavi of Molana Rumi and other historical works have many interesting stories, but they have been generally ignored by Iranian playwrights.
In playwriting, one must pay due attention to several factors such as mood, visual imagery, and tension of the storyline, and Iranian historical works enjoy these factors.
The beauty of structure and language, rhythmic dialogue, the heroes, dramatic conflict, complexity, crisis, suspense, and many ups and downs are all evident in works such as the Shahnameh and the travelogues written by famous Iranian writers.
The events in the Shahnameh are wonderfully set one after the other. Rustam and Sohrab, Bijan and Manijeh, and the stories of Sam, Forud, and Siyavosh could all be turned into good plays.
Of course, the heroic stories of the Shahnameh have the characteristics of a play more than its other sections. The storylines are solid, as if Ferdowsi had written them using modern techniques.
Ferdowsi, whose full name was Abol-Qassem Ferdowsi (940?-1020?), has been called the Homer of Persia. Ferdowsi was born near Tus in Khorasan Province. He spent 35 years writing his Shahnameh (Book of Kings) and completed it in the year 1010, when he was about 70 years old.
The Shahnameh contains 60,000 rhyming couplets, making it more than seven times the length of Homer's Iliad.
RM/HG
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MNA
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