Research problem

Many irrelevant factors have altered the ways we live, work, communicate, inform ourselves, engage in the artistic sphere, and namely in the context of the art (Bergmann, & Morris, 2019; Fuchs, 2011; Minehart et al., 2020). Theatre and other concerning humanistic performances are the process of empowering people to seek equity upon sustainable factors (Cuervo Sánchez, 2019). Nevertheless, censorship and suppressions in some societies prevent the sublimation of this mission (Khan, 2019; Morelli, 2019). One of the prevalent restrictions in Iranian theatre is gender-oriented censorship. This artistic mainstream has been regarded as a social evidence and symbol.

The art reminds us who we really are. Citizens work in a social space surrounded by media dominance. Reciprocal information flow in an alive social-communicative scope can facilitate triumphing social distress and inequities (Emery, 2002; Morelli, 2019). One of the prominent indicators of social engagement in the current era is considered as sharing the occasional experiences in a dynamic state of the theatre (Sharvit et al., 2018). Meanwhile, some barriers in some countries like the ones in middle-east and the Arab residents of the Persian Gulf, namely in Iran prevent this kind of freedom. Indeed, this crucial constraint, threaten the sustainable position of humanity in social context.

These above-mentioned barriers are usually as a result of dominant unstable political, religious, cultural, and other dominant obligatory policies; that even have been occurred in the theatre context; especially after the Iranian Islamic revolution of 1979 (O'Dell, 2020).

Nowadays, this kind of suppression has changed to self-censorship in Iranian theatre that is a symbol of social sphere. Hayes, Glynn, and Shanahan (2005a, p. 298, 2005b, p. 443) define self-censorship as “withholding of one's true opinion from an audience perceived to disagree with that opinion” and maintain that conformity is a form of self-censorship. Accordingly, obligations menace socio-cultural stable equanimity in a dynamic environment without economic compensation. Therefore, preserving these unwanted forces make the Iranian theatre observe a series of self-censorship in their professional experiences.

Iranian theatre artists in the diaspora have also drawn inspiration from the subject of transsexuality and attempted to explore it onstage. Furthermore, trans theatre artists and activists are acutely aware that self-cognition, along with its more public recitation—that is, its narrative and bodily presentations is what makes a transsexual recognized by others (O'Dell, 2020).

Theoretically, self-censorship is defined as intentionally and voluntarily withholding information from others in absence of formal obstacles; this kind of censorship can be increased upon obligatory politics, religious, folkloric reactions, traditional beliefs, that gender-oriented one is often dependent on a mix of these mentioned misconceptions. (Sharvit et al., 2018). Public self-censorship describes a range of individual reactions to a public censorship regime. Self-censorship thus understood means that individuals internalize some aspects of the public censor and then censor themselves. Private self-censorship is the suppression by an agent of their own attitudes where a public censor is either absent or irrelevant. Private self-censorship therefore involves an intrapersonal conflict between the actual expressive attitudes held by an agent and the set of permissible expressive attitudes that they endorse (Cook & Heilmann, 2010).

Any regime that exercises control over other types of media would quite understandably be frightened by the prospect of immense power in the hands of the people granted by social media. Nevertheless, Shadmehr and Bernhardt consider the regime’s decisions under a model in which a strong independent media already exists, where it is not possible to completely control (as is the case with social media). They once again assert that censorship is beneficial to cementing power over the people, but that if it is overdone, it may be counterproductive. Meanwhile, in countries like China, social media criticism relieves social pressure when it simply comments on that which the mainstream media have already reported. This is referred to as the safety valve, which allows citizens to vent their frustrations without posing significant threat to the regime. It is also beneficial to a government that wishes to take feedback from citizens to improve and solve social problems (Hasan, 2019).

Finally, surveys in this context rarely examined the multi-lateral state of factors effects on gender-oriented censorship according to the art scope. And a huge research gap remains to fill out in the case of gender-oriented censorship and its equity-based sustainable failures in the theatre sector of the art.

Meanwhile, based on above mentioned effective factors of censorship, in some folkloric and religious societies, and upon political obligations, photos, banners and totally the art of theatre becomes affected from the gender-oriented censorship. Therefore, self-censor intentions increase. In this case, after Iran 1979 Islamic Revolution, scenarios and the remained theatre works of the before, becomes intentionally gender-oriented censored (through burning or cutting unveiled persons in the photos, or omitting the sexy parts of the speeches).

While censorship is often regarded as part of the natural order of Iranian theatre, the current research is about to investigate the critical failure factors of Iranian contemporary gender-oriented censorship and its effects on multilateral state of sustainability. Besides, the present study also examines the theatre with no gender censorship in Germany; because of achieving comparative results.

Theoretical framework

As McClure (1995) observes, “Censorship is not a problem of good versus evil but ‘your’ perception of good versus ‘my’ perception of good” (p. 4). Shannon (2009) suggests that while it might be too simplistic to think that censorship really can protect children from being harmed by the values and ideas of others, the real purpose of censorship is to serve as “a tactic for challenging other people’s views… and for demanding respect for one’s own views from other people” (p. 5). One of the most frequently cited arguments for defending censorship derives from the cultural model of childhood innocence (Davis & Robinson, 2010; Robinson, 2008). This view is based on the belief that children need to be shielded from learning about sexuality, which is perceived as something negative and dangerous. Many educators reject this view, however, and suggest that not educating children about topics like sexuality may harm them, even though the goal was to protect. For example (Leland & Bangert, 2019). The acts stated above violate human rights and has been deemed a right that needs to remain protected. It does not end with just the suppression of speech, which in itself is extremely important alone.

Research questions

- Which factors have been caused the gender-oriented censorship circumstance in theatre after Iran 1979 Islamic Revolution?

- What are critical indicators of gender-oriented censorship in theatre scope?

- What are the main demonstrations of gender-oriented self-censorship in Iranian contemporary official theatre?

Anticipated methods

In the first step, with a qualitative research method, interviews will be conducted among statistical samples randomly selected. The population of research are Iranian theatre artists who have experience of gender-oriented censorship in scene appearance and scenario and other relevant issues. Data will be gathered regarding their experiences. This qualitative research approach allows the reconstruction of effective key metrics of gender-oriented censorship structure in relation with sustainable variables. For the second, a quantitative approach will be undertaken to measure the nature of gender-oriented censorship developing rate; in this part of research a questionnaire will be distributed among those same sample to prioritize the effective indicators. Implemented variables of this questionnaire are chosen upon interviews. In the same way, secondary data will be gathered from the Germany’s theatre scope.

Finally, analysis will be executed via coding; coding provide researcher with analytic tools for handling masses of raw data and help analysts to consider alternative meanings of specific phenomena according to grounded theory.

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