History, Aporia and Politics in Bahram Beyzaie's Death of Yazdgerd

As a prominent Iranian playwright and screenwriter, Bahram Beyzaie (b. 1948) stages Iranian history and mythology in his plays. His play Death of Yazdgerd (1980) represents the murder of the last Sasanian monarch Yazdgerd III during the Arab invasion of Persia in 651 AD. Having been published a year after the Islamic Revolution of 1979, the play draws a parallel between the conquering Arabs in Persia, and Islamic revolutionaries in contemporary Iranian context. In Death of Yazdgerd, Beyzaie views history as a text that needs to be interrogated, and by reconstruction of past narratives, he also raises the important question that from whose voice and point of view such narratives must be written. Therefore, this study, by using poststructuralism and close analysis, explores the way in which Beyzaie questions the documentary impulse in modern Iranian historical playwriting. It also articulates that how Beyzaie in Death of Yazdgerd willfully manipulates the historical past to invite historical speculation about the actual historical murder of Yazdgerd III. Seen as such, his history play aims to reveal the contradiction and polyvocality of history.

Keywords: Bahram Beyzaie; Death of Yazdgerd; History Play; Aporia; Poststructuralism.