L.I.S.A. - Nationalism on Stage: Theater and Nation Building in Early Pahlavi-Iran
In the early Pahlavi period (1921-1941), theater became a popular form of Europe-oriented entertainment for the new, secularized Iranian middle class that was to establish itself during Reza Shah's reign. In a time when mass media did not yet exist, theater played an important role as a medium for the communication of nationalist ideas and modernization policies. In their joint lecture, Dr Anna Heller and Prof. Ole Werner emphasise the diversity of the 'new theater' as a didactic means of political education, bourgeois amusement and social event. Christoph Werner's and Anna Heller's research project "Nationalism on Stage: Theater and Nation Building in Early Pahlavi-Iran" was funded by the Gerda Henkel Foundation as part of the special programme Islam.