Social factors influencing Iranian plays and playwrights

Sociology of the artists is one of the subfields in the sociology of art which studies artists from at least two points of view. First, it studies individual, social and cultural characteristics of artists and the relationships of these factors to their tendencies towards becoming artist. Second, it addresses the styles and contents prevailing in the artists’ work in a certain period of time and its relationship to their contemporary social conditions.
Following the above mentioned perspective, the present paper is an attempt to investigate the most important factors influencing Iranian plays and playwrights. Methodologically, it is based on surveying a sample of play writhers along with a documentary analysis. The data is drawn from a field study in Iran, in which 75 playwrights were surveyed. First, these writers were asked to respond to a researcher constructed questionnaire. Second, two plays of each writer were studied based on writers’ own suggestion. Based on reading of these plays, view of playwrights about their own style and content of work and viewpoints of some critics, the style and prevailing content of each writer were determined.
The relationship between prevailing style and content of writers’ works is analyzed through dividing the whole period of study into shorter periods and taking into consideration the social conditions of each period. The findings showed that there was no meaningful relationship between artists’ social characteristics and the social conditions surrounding their works with their prevailing style and content. This is an unexpected result, as in the literature of sociology of art the effects of society on art is clearly emphasized. The reason for this unexpected result is analyzed in the conclusion section of this article.