An Intercultural Analysis of Iranian Dramatic Translations of in Last Two Decades (Case studies : The Mares’ Dance and Based on The Duchess of Malfi)

This research attempts to analyze the intercultural aspects in Iranian dramatic translations of last two decades on the basis of former Professor of theatre studies and theatre semioticist Patrice Pavis (born 1945) intercultural theories specially in his book ‘Theatre at the Crossroad of Cultures’ and by using some related Interdisciplinary methods. Nowadays the necessity of an intercultural theory in theatre, which does the fine-tuning between theatrical forms and academic informations, is more perceptible in multicultural communities and intercultural relations. The fine-tuning of sociosemiotics model of culture should make a relationship between theatre mise en scène and cultural context with an emphasis on translations and adaptations. This research tries to find out what changes in dramatic (performative) translations on the road from source culture to the target culture. In order to study these changes, the plays that are known as "re-readings" or “retellings” in the conventional playwriting terms and they are considered as adaptations of foreign plays are among the best cases that fit the academic discipline of the dramatic literature. In intercultural theory of theatre, all these adaptations called as dramatic translations. Two major structural models for dramatic translations which describe the intersection of situations of enunciation and the series of concretizations are used in order to analyze case studies. Besides, the definition of mise en scène in intercultural theory like french criticism tradition includes all theatrical elements and it holds them all together with specific aesthetic principles. This view of mise en scène is much more suitable for analyzing modern performances and intercultural dramatic translations, which considers participation in the process of interpretation and signification for audiences and readers. There are different typologies of mise en scène, but mise en scène of classic texts typology is used in Pavis’ intercultural theory of theatre. This typology includes three kinds of mise en scène named autotexual, ideotexual and intertextual. This research first explains the theoretical foundations of intercultural analysis using Pavis’ opinions, then it analyzes the case studies in a descriptive analytics. This study hopes it can show that these cultural changes on the context of mise en scène and the intersection of situations of enunciation, involve the series of concretizations, although at last these adaptations did not pay sufficient attention to the target culture elements. To this purpose, with taking into account the artistic eminence of the playwrights and also with considering the unchanging of the medium in the direction of dramatic translation, two plays have been selected as case study: The Mares’ Dance (Raghs-e Madian-ha) Mohammad Charmshir's retelling of the play “Yerma” by Federico Garcia Lorca, and Based on The Duchess of Malfi Naghmeh Samini and Mohammad Rezaei-Rad’s cooperation reread of the play “The Duchess of Malfi” by John Webster. This research tries to show that the first case evolved in intersection of three situations of enunciation by a autotexual mise en scène and the other one shaped in crossroad of fourteen situations of enunciation by a ideotexual mise en scène.