Loose Links Between Theater & Literature (Part II)

As it was said in the part one, the link between Iran’s literature and theater is experiencing its weakest period today. Based on examples listed, the 1960s and 1970s were golden age of such relationship and 1990s and 2000s were the most stagnant periods. Other than a few names such as Fares Bagheri or Chista Yasrebi, who pen in both fields, as well as playwrights including Mohammad Yaghoubi and Mohammad Charmshir, who have adaptations from great literary works, there are no outstanding figures that are active in both areas.
Such weak links rob both literature and theater of advantages each art could bring for, creating a serious void for both, which some important and significant examples are to be set.

Benefits of Literature for Theater
Narratives: Narratives in fiction, particularly in recent century, has experienced huge changes inspired by “the Stream of Consciousness” in works of writers such as Virginia Woolf and James Joyce through timeless and placeless limbos of France’s nouveau roman writers as well as fragmentations and paradox of post-modernist literary figures. Fiction has taken its most important steps in narratives and playing with different genres of narratives in the past century.
Such modern narratives – though with some delays – entered Iran’s fiction world, too. Houshang Golshiri, Abbas Maroufi and Mohammad-Reza Kateb are three different generations of Iran’s fiction writers whose stories reflect such changes. Iran’s dramatic literature, however, has never been flexible to modernism. Events are still linear in plays except for a few examples “It Doesn’t Snow in Egypt” and “There Is No One to Remember All Stories”, both by Charmshir and a few other plays, no other post-revolution playwrights have played with narratives and elements of time and place in his plays. I think the reason behind this is that many of our playwrights are not well-informed of new narratives techniques. This is while many playwrights in 1960s and 1970s have employed different techniques thanks to strong relationship between literature and theater. A host of plays written by Abbas Nalbandian, notably “Bareshe Mehr (Compassion Rain)”, “Marg (Death)” and “Sandali ra Kenare Panjereh Begzarim (Put the Chair Near Window) as well as works by Bahman Forsi “Bahar va Aroosak (The Spring & The Doll)”, “Chobe Zire Baghal (The Crutches)” and “Asayeshgah (Asylum) employed various techniques of narratives.  The strong relationship between literature and theater could bring diversity and richness of fiction to our dramatic literature, as well.
Consciousness: Theater, in its nature, is a realistic and objective art because what happens on the set is taking place in front of audience. That’s why the art is more inclined toward objectivity and realism rather than imagination and consciousness.  The emergence of the movements like Symbolism, Surrealism and Expressionism in early 20th century, on one hand, and proposals by those like Antonin Artaud and Edward Gordon, on the other hand, pushed theater toward dreams, imagination and poetry.  
On the contrary literature is the art of imagination and the major part of what is created by words falls on imagination of readers. This is why imagination and consciousness occupy a huge place in the world’s literary masterpieces, especially those written from the 20th century onward. Some pure samples of imagination are works by writers such as Italo Calvino and Kurt Vonnegut. In Iran the inclination toward imagination and consciousness is seen in works by Sadegh Hedayat, followed by Gholamhossein Saedi and Bahram Sadeghi. Use of imagination in dramatic literature of 1960s and 1970s is significantly seen by writers such as Forsi and Nalbandian. Apart from a few plays, there is a radical inclination toward creation of objective space and realist work by post-revolution playwrights. This has significantly decreased diversity and richness of Iranian plays.  This is while a strong link between literature and theater could have injected a deep and strong layer of imagination and dreams into Iran’s dramatic literature.
Advantages of Theater for Literature
Dialogue: The most important medium of a play is its dialogue. It is the main tool for playwright to create space, time, place and characters. Such main role of dialogue in the play gives playwrights a chance to turn into proficient dialogue writers. On the other hand, characterization through dialogue in successful plays have given each character the chance to have his/her own accent and word treasure. Different layers of language could be seen in each good play, creating a polyphonic atmosphere.
A rich dialogue writing culture in theater could be a good guidance for many writers, especially those who seriously want to have an account of their souls and interior and exterior descriptions in a way that somehow they forget the characters and become absolute rulers of their works. Writers, in the world modern litterature, attach great importance to dialogue writing in a way that consice and vivid dialogues are one of charachteristics of Hemingway’s stories.
Characterization: Play is deprived of many opportunities of fiction such as descriptions, creation of space by writer or narrator and above all lack of the presence of a narrator- except for certain cases- as well as diversified approaches. This puts the heavy burden of narratives on two important elements; dialogue and characters. Therefore, playwrights put their efforts on these two elements and should characters are created in a good way, they could turn into an eternal and influential figures. The characterization in a play is not made by descriptions by writers or narrators but by charcter’s personality, behavior and dialogue. This is a crossroad where fiction writers could take lots of lessons from dramatic literature. While the description or passive description play important role in the characterization in dramatic literature, it could also serve as an effective and modern role model for fiction through picturing a character by his/her or others personality and dialogue.
Direct Contact With Audience: Theater is the sole art which has the chance to be in touch with its audience directly. This possibility gives avant-garde playwrights like Peter Handke to have a strong narrative and write majority of their plays based on direct contact with audience. Meanwhile, many classic plays and works by Aristophanes and Plautus through modern plays of those like Bernard Marie Koltes employ aside, which let the character shuts himself from the world for moments to have direct face-to-face talks with audience.
Such technique and many others ones in dramatic literature could diversify Iran’s fiction techniques, too.  Many of the world’s fictions have used such techniques of dramatic literature. One of the best examples is “If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler” by Italo Calvino where the writer has employed aside technique in every corner of his novel.
What is said was only some significant samples, describing that should the relationship between theater and literature is established stronglywhat would be its achievments for either Iran’s theatre or literature.