Oral History of Theater for Children and Young Adults in Iran

Akram Dashtban
Translated by Ruhollah Golmoradi

2018-8-21

According to Iranian Oral History Website, the book of 100 years oral history of theater for children and young adults of Iran will be written by Child Theater Foundation in collaboration with NLAI. 21 personalities in field of theater for children will be interviewed for the book.

Shafiqeh Sadat Niknafs, head of Oral History Department of NLAI, told Iranian Oral History Website correspondent on implementation of oral history project of a 100 years theater for children and young adults in Iran, "Conducting the project was started by referring Davoud Kianian, playwright, director and teacher of theater for children and young adult to NLAI. Considering that one hundred years passed since the first performance of theater for children by Jabbar Baghtcheban, it was decided to hold an oral history project in this subject and interview with those who have been active in this field.

He added, "Because the fact was a specialized project, we suggested that Mr. Davoud Kianian himself to be administrator of the project. Of course, this project was referred to research council of the organization as well as the agreement committee several times, eventually lead to conducting the project.

Head of Oral History Department of NLAI described about time of conducting this agreement, "The first meeting was held on April 18, 2018, and the agreement between Child Theater Foundation and NLAI was contracted and the project was started from July 14, 2018 and it was intended 21 experienced people in this area will be interviewed. Each interview is between 2 and 3 sessions, and expected time for the project is 18 months, which will be published as a book after end of the interviews. The interviews will be printed either in one book in shorted way, which seems unlikely, or be in 2 or 3 volumes.

Niknafs said on subject scope of the interviews, "Topic of the interviews is children and young adolescent theater, and those who have been impressive in it and played a role. Artists will be interviewed in this regard.

He continued, "Our assessment of this project is very good; because Mr. Kianian has been working on this topic for many years and focuses on the work. He is himself writer and director and has published 3 books in field of children plays, and directed some works and is fully familiar with this space. This is one dimension of the case, and the other issue is that Theater Foundation supports the project, and those who have worked in this area are themselves a theoretical and practical reference, are expert and professional, and can do this project very well.

About those who have been selected for interview, Niknafs said: "The people selected are experts and can express independent voices, and this process of specialized interview is supported in terms of content by the professors. Doing the project is an important issue; for this reason, we created an executive committee within NLAI to review content in order to support the project. The plan includes helping traffic of the artists, providing a suitable and comfortable atmosphere for interviewing, and presence of professional expert of NLAI in the interview sessions and offering an offer to improve interview process.

He added, those who are selected and will be interviewed are introduced by Child Theater Foundation. We did not intervene in their choice, and we are only executive arm, and in terms of content, we lead the project with standards of oral history.