Revisionist Mythmaking in the Theatre of Bahram Beyzai

Revisionist mythmaking started as a movement to encourage women to write about themselves, rewrite patriarchal mythology from female perspectives, and overcome the system that has excluded female presence to a large degree. Unlike how feminists defined mythmakers, to be female writer, this essay aims to study a male playwright, Bahram Beyzai, to examine whether a man can act as a revisionist mythmaker or not. Beyzai is one of the few writers in Persian literature who is fascinated by writing adaptations. Among his many works which are dedicated to rewrite myths, fairytales and old stories, he has used mythology to portray issues regarding women in two of his plays: Killing Sohrab and One Thousand and First Night. This essay, after the examination of these two plays, reveals that although Beyzai has used feminist strategies to undermine the patriarchal features of mythology, but he is only successful in writing a feminist work with One Thousand and First Night.