Emphasis on continuous cooperation between students and national theatre through Universities’ Theatre Institute

Referring to the issues discussed during the meeting, in an interview with Iran Theatre site, chief of Universities’ Theatre Institute said that “in fact our theatre is not in a good situation, and the university theatre is experiencing a worse situation. Without pondering over our educational capacity, day by day we recruit more students and doing this, we are going to lose the few ones we had already. The large number of students, insufficient facilities, theatre masters shortages, inadequate use of university halls, especially Molavi theatre hall because of their depreciated equipments and lack of jobs for graduates and also theatre students, all has created an atmosphere of hopelessness among the students and without founding a solution, in the future, the theatre society would pay a heavy price for that.”

Nasser babashahi added that “Having said that, General Director of Iran’s dramatic arts sought to take advantage of the capabilities of artists, university officials and university theater practitioners, especially theater groups’ education directors to create a mechanism to provide the right set of circumstances in order to do what was abandoned by the Higher Education Center officials.”

He went on to say that “planning has been done in the field and some mechanisms have been defined for monitoring, planning, educating, research and executive sections. In this regard, missions and functions have been defined for each of them.”

Emphasizing on supportive approach, Babashahi added that “these missions which generally are supportive in nature, would lead to promotion of students’ capabilities and also would help the authorities to identify talented and elite students and to recruit them.”   

Chief of Universities’ Theatre Institute added “this way, department of dramatic arts can financially support the university thesis. Also the performance of top university dramas should be facilitated in Tehran and provinces. For example, students’ Top theatre works in provinces should be able to perform in Tehran theatre halls. Another important task is finding the weak points of university theatre festivals. Beside all of these, we hope that, holding play writing and essay writing competitions would lead to a more vivid and dynamic university theatre.   

According to Iran Theatre site, Hussein Taheri, General Director of Iran’s dramatic arts, admiring the holding of such a meeting and welcoming continuation of it, said “Universities Theatre Institute as an interface between theatre professionals and theatre students, help to have an adequate planning in order to improve the national theatre in universities.”

“The vast field of university theatre, gives the university officials a good opportunity to correct the approaches and processes and through this, help to improve the national theatre”, he added.

At the end of the meeting, Taheri emphasized on the necessity of continuous collaboration between professors, students, university officials and theatre society.

It should be noted that during a session which was held by theatre university professors and experts, at General Director of dramatic Arts office, on 26 of April, the attendees agreed on holding continuous sessions for discussing the current issues of university theatre. Dr Mohammadreza Khaki, manager of acting and directing desk in dramatic arts department at Tarbiat Modarres University, Dr Shahram Zargar, manager of drama desk at cinema-theatre department of Art University, Dr Behrouz Mahmoudi Bakhtiyari, manager of drama desk at cinema-theatre faculty of Fine Arts University, Dr Farzad Mo’afi, vice president of art faculty of Soureh University and Dr Katayoun Feyz Marandi, manager of drama desk at architect department of Azad University, were among the attendees.