About Ru-Howzi

The Ru Howzi resembles commedia dell’arte in the use of stock character types, thin plot lines and its use of music and dance. One of the most important elements in Ru Howzi is improvisation. It is this crucial aesthetic element that allows for the creativity and unending freshness that characterizes these performing arts and gives scope for their continued development. This theatrical form is improvised to such an extent that if the price of bread were raised by the government in the afternoon, that evening, ten minutes before going onstage, the performers would construct the play around that subject. The subject or topic that the performers chooses for the performance is always the latest political event, preferably a scandal or outrage, and most of the time the event that they choose to make fun of is only hours old.

In Ru Howzi the lower and weaker characters triumph, at least temporarily, in the theatrical context. Within the Ru Howzi Iranian life can be seen, but in reverse: the servant orders the master, the daughter marries the suitor of her choice, the villager wins over the landlord—the world upside down. Improvisational comic Ru Howzi is a mirror of Iranian culture, but a mirror that reflects the opposite of the political and social reality of everyday life and therefore might be said to operate as a safety valve for the expression of political and social discontent and frustration. Theater scholar Peter Chelkowski’s incisive analysis neatly sums up the social function of this theatrical form: “Humor and laughter have generally been the only outlet for grievances against the harsh and autocratic governments, rulers and fathers.” No other defense was available or exempt from punishment. Because of its political satire, the Iranian government was and is afraid of the Ru Howzi and that currently in Iran it is being performed underground.

It is a well-known fact that the Ru Howzi use exclusively male performers even for female roles. It would be culturally intolerable in many settings to have a real woman on stage in some of the stock Ru Howzi situations. The fact that a male is playing these roles allows the humorous point of the comedy to be made without offending anyone's sensibilities. Male performers wear dresses, wigs, head-coverings, and occasionally false breasts or other "enhancements" to their bodies. Their dress is always contemporary with their audience. The actors also adopt female way of walking and vocal characteristics, using traditional female expressions in their speech, a higher-pitch to their voices and feminine arm and hand movements. They use make-up: primarily rouge lipstick, and occasionally eye makeup. The actor playing female roles is known as a zan-push (female dresser). The zan-push is usually called upon to dance before the show actually begins. Thus he evokes the sexual nature of his role even before the themes of the comedy are presented.

There is a distinction between those actors who try to look and act as much like a woman as possible, and those who try to achieve "distance" from their female role. The latter are engaged in alienation representation. The actors representing women through alienation achieve their distancing effect by using exaggerated or ludicrous clothing. If they wear makeup it is designed to make them look ugly or humorous rather than to appear as a normal female. Their movements are more intense than that of a normal female and their voice patterns tend to be harsh, ugly or an exaggerated falsetto. In general, alienation is perhaps the most significant theme of Ru Howzi, and utilizes a combination of techniques to essentially distance the audience from the authenticity of the play, thereby creating a sense of voyeurism and objectivity towards the stage, performers and characters. According to Ru Howzi, alienation dissuades the audience from becoming emotionally involved in the play, and rather encourages them to become more critically involved, thereby engaging the why instead of the what. These techniques rely on various means of interruptions, music, ridicule, sarcasm, imitation, irony or other methods with intent to bring about improvement and/or change.

In Ru Howzi, characters are often designed in regards to society’s constructs and current affairs. For instance, the central character in most performances is referred to as Siaah (the clown). This character bears the principal burden of a satirical performance, and is known to spontaneously address the audience, while occasionally even invading their space. Oftentimes, the Siaah is known to articulate the same thoughts that the audience may not be willing to express. In doing so, the Siaah calls into question all aspects of human social relationships. Questions of status, social prerogative, politics, economy and sexual relations are all fair game for the performer. The comedy in Ru Howzi consists of verbal puns and comebacks, as well as physical slapstick routines which can easily be heard out of context and still retain their humor. The Siaah’s inherent insanity and naiveté protects the character’s remarks from authority, and on a larger scale, Ru Howzi’s improvisational socio-political criticism often dissuades censorship and trouble from the law. Periodically, however, it does run into some serious opposition.