Female "Almas": Representation of Actresses in the Role of Almas after the Islamic Revolution

In the history of Iranian traditional performances (especially the Siyāh-Bāzi), the presence and action of women has been extremely limited, and in some cases, totally done away with. Also, due to the lack of archival resources, there are very few documents available to reflect the presence of women in this field. However, there has recently been an upsurge in the presence of women during the post-revolutionary years, especially in the field of Siyāh-Bāzi and performing the role of Almās (Siyāh) as the leading character. The present article deals with the presence of women as Siyāh, which was not noticed in the pre-revolutinary Iran. The theoretical framework of this article is based on the postmodern feminist ideas, with reference to Judith Butler's ideas on "Gender identity" and "Cross dressing". We seek to show why women were not present in the Siyāh-Bāzi performances before the revolution, and how they have developed a new discourse in this field in the recent years. The results of this study show that being an "other" results in a sort of deconstruction and the emergence of a new phenomenon referred to as the emergence of a female Almās in a feminine discourse: A new discourse which is the result of turning to a new "other", together with the deformation of the traditional approaches. In other words, the cross dressing of Almās is the result of a challenge for gender equality.