Akbar Zabeh: Dramatic works are the basis for the revival of traditional rituals

According to the theater correspondent of Fars news agency, Iranian dolls can each represent a story or an original culture of civilized Iranian cities, stories that have a deep connection with dolls from the distant past and in different Iranian cities.

Akbar Zabeh is the author and director of the show “Azerbaijan Ayinlari” from the city of Marand, East Azerbaijan, in the street section of the 19th Tehran-Mubarak Puppet Theater Festival.

A collection of local customs of East Azerbaijan has become the basis for the performance of this show and its text.

He said about this show and its story: “In this show, we considered a showcase of traditional rituals of Azerbaijan. In this show, we have a tour that introduces the four main rituals of Azerbaijan province; First, it is “Ketakmandari”. In the past, the Tekem Bandar would come to the city with “Tekem” a week before Eid and congratulate the people on the arrival of the New Year. The other is “Sayachi” which means counting, in fact, Sayachi is a song that counts the last days of the year and reminds people that there are still a few days left to the New Year.

He continued: “Another ritual is “Chemchekhatun” which is very important for the people of Azerbaijan from a spiritual and traditional point of view, because Chamchekhatun used to gather the children of the city and village during the drought and pray for rain on a hill and after it rains with He used to prepare and spread Ashi with the people. At the end, we have the “Ksakchel” ritual, in which two Lude characters went everywhere together, making people laugh and bringing joy by singing and dancing in early spring. In fact, these are rituals that we introduce to the audience in the form of puppets. In addition to this, we also included a story in this show that is about two young people who, after going through many problems, finally connect with each other.”

Zabeh considered remembering and preserving rituals as the most important feature of his show and continued: “Unfortunately, these rituals have been forgotten, and even in the region of Azerbaijan, these rituals have faded. Now we are trying to reacquaint people with the customs of the past by performing this show and remember what rituals we had in the past. “I’ve been doing tekmdaran for 15 years, but even in my city, most people don’t know what tekmdaran is.”

This Azerbaijani artist pointed to the reception of the audience and added: “The reception of the performances in Tehran is good, but the culture of watching shows has not taken place in small towns and even in Azerbaijan, and people have a hard time coming to watch works in theaters. Comedy shows are well-known in our cities, and puppet and classical theaters do not have a large audience and are not welcomed because they have not been cultured for them.

In response to the question why puppet performances such as marquee shows are not far from booming in the cities, he also explained: The first point is the financial issue, in the past, puppeteers used to earn their daily income in this way, but today it is not like this and because The lack of financial support has given up this work. On the other hand, these days people don’t communicate with these works anymore and they mostly make fun of these works; These factors, along with other reasons, have joined hands so that the performance of puppet shows will no longer be very prosperous.”

Zabeh also said about the characteristics of this period of the Puppet Theater Festival: “A young and motivated team has entered the festival’s secretariat, most of whom are people who came from the heart of Puppet Theater. On the other hand, the judging of the works has been entrusted to the directors themselves, and this is a new system in our theater that has removed the judges and left it to the directors themselves. This has increased the competition and increased the quality of the festival.

The 19th Tehran-Mubarak International Puppet Show Festival, under the direction of Hadi Hejazifar, is being held in Tehran from July 8th to 17th.

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