Iranian Artists to Perform Islamic Passion Plays in Europe

With the efforts of the Iranian cultural attaché’s office in Berlin, a group of Iranian Ta’zieh performers have travelled to Germany and Poland to put the religious play on show for people there.

Speaking in a Farsi interview with IQNA, Iran’s cultural attaché in Germany, Seyyed Ali Moujani, said, “For the first time, Ta’zieh will be performed by a group of Iranian artists from the city of Qazvin.”

He added that the Iranian cultural attaché’s office in Germany, the Hafez Institute, Iran’s House in Berlin, the Iranian Embassy in Germany, and the Iranian Consulate in Hamburg will co-operate in this programme, and the Ta’zieh group would have performances in Berlin, Hamburg and Frankfurt.

“The Ta’zieh band will be in Germany for 10 days and next to having performances for the Iranians, they are going to have performances for the audience on the sidelines the Frankfurt International Book Fair where the book ‘Maqtal Al-Hussein’ would be released.”

Moujani went on to say that having some performances in Warsaw, the capital of Poland, is among the other programs of the Iranian band, and we are coordinating it with the Iranian embassy there.

He also noted that the performances in Germany will be conducted in Farsi, but in Poland it will simultaneously be translated into Polish.

Seifollah Shokri, a traditional and religious music expert and Ta’zieh researcher, who heads the group in Germany, said, “This is the fifth year that we will be performing abroad. Germany would be our first experience in Europe.”

He also emphasized that Ta’zieh is a Shiite-Iranian art, saying that Ta’zieh is the only play of the Muslim world which exclusively belongs to Shiites and Iranians, that is, if it is performed in other countries in a basic form, they are copying from Iran.

About the goals of these performances in Germany and Poland he said “one of our most important goals is to professionally introduce this art and its features to the scientific communities around the world, especially Europe, as one of the theatre cradles.”

“From a religious point of view, 130 of the greatest Shiite scholars in the past two hundred years have been issuing positive fatwas on this art because the ceremony makes the audience familiar with the Shiite school and Imam Hussein’s (AS) cause,” he concluded.