A play in a community's own language

This lesson asks you to show an understanding of some drama and theatre themes and traditions from a variety of times, communities and places. The museum links one record, on a nineteenth-century dramatist of the Caucasus; your class will add other traditions, including those the curriculum names. ¹

Look at the expectation: it asks for themes and traditions from different times and places. For one play or playwright, note who wrote it, in which language, for which audience, and what it argues for.

Mirza Fath 'Ali Akhund-zada wrote six comedies between 1850 and 1857 in Adhari Turkish, the Azerbaijani Turkish of the Caucasus. ² Several of his plays were published in Russian in the official journal Kavkaz and performed in Russian at Tiflis and St Petersburg. ³ Pupils of the Azerbaijani state schools gave the first performances in the original language at the end of the 1870s. ³

The Encyclopaedia of Islam says that the advance of the theatre at Tiflis under the military governor, Prince Vorontsov, gave him his push towards drama; he worked in Vorontsov's chancellery as an oriental interpreter. ² It also says that he urged loyalty to the Russian authorities, to ease the passage of the Transcaucasian Muslims into modern life. ³

Several of the plays were seen in Russian before pupils performed them in their original language. What does a play gain or lose when it is performed in a language other than the one it was written in, and why?

• Mirza Fath 'Ali Akhund-zada: his schooling, his plays and the languages they appeared in.
• Tiflis: the town where he worked, as the museum's older records describe it.

Read Mirza Fath 'Ali Akhund-zada and make a card that says where and when he wrote, what his plays argued against, and who first performed them in the original language. Then make a second card for a tradition from another community.