Taziyeh Puppets<\/a><\/p>\nAn important story in Islam is the heroic martyrdom of Hussein.\u00a0 Hussein was the grandson of the prophet.\u00a0 After the death of the prophet, there was a problem of leadership.\u00a0 Two divisions were created, the Sunnis and Shi\u2019ites.\u00a0 In a constant battle for power, Hussein ended up being slain by the opposing forces.\u00a0 In the end, the righteous suffer, but this suffering is seen as redemptive and leads to salvation after judgement.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0A form of Shiism performance\/dramatic narration of the events emerged as a commemoration for Hussein\u2019s martyrdom, called Ta\u2019ziyeh.\u00a0 These are communal events in which a community gets together to watch and perform this tale. When reading about this art form, I was inspired to put a twist onto it.\u00a0 Peter Chelokwski, describes the different variations and its developments over time and in different cultures.\u00a0 One quote stood out to me:<\/p>\n
Although many critics have written that this retreat to the provinces had a swift and deleterious effect upon Taziyeh as an art form, a strong case can be made to show that, to the contrary, it purified and preserved it. The Persian village tradition with its sources in popular religion is more simple, organic, and theatrical than the urban tradition.\u00a0 Its imagination is more closely attached to the essentials of life; it is less abstract and intellectual, less wedded to the spectacular effect\u2026and a far greater potential for coherence and empathy between actor and audience (9).<\/p>\n
He goes on to describe rural Ta\u2019ziyeh as the \u201cunconscious avant-garde of the \u2018poor theatre\u2019\u201d.\u00a0 It engages participation and is very dynamic, though stripped down for the use of imagination.\u00a0 When watching a performance in lecture, I was drawn to how involved the adults were, but how reclusive the children were. I was interested in making a kid-friendly version of Taziyeh.\u00a0 I was able to make two puppets: Hussein and Shimar.\u00a0 I think it would be interesting to see this performance as a puppet show, especially with the development of society and decline of this form of art.\u00a0 I used the symbolic colors of green for the protagonist and red for the antagonist.\u00a0 I painted Hussein\u2019s face gold and added glitter to show his divine relations as being one of the Ahl al-Bayt.\u00a0 Though I am not able to make all the characters, a set, more costumes, props, etc. I believe a puppet version of the Ta\u2019ziyeh has the potential to increase the interaction between audience and participant as well as target a younger audience with this profound and important story.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Taziyeh Puppets An important story in Islam is the heroic martyrdom of Hussein.\u00a0 Hussein was the grandson of the prophet.\u00a0 After the death of the prophet, there was a problem of leadership.\u00a0 Two divisions were created, the Sunnis and Shi\u2019ites.\u00a0 In a constant battle for power, Hussein ended up being slain by the opposing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6298,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/garrettallen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/garrettallen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/garrettallen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/garrettallen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6298"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/garrettallen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/garrettallen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/garrettallen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11\/revisions\/49"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/garrettallen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/garrettallen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/garrettallen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}