MESA 2019 Paper Proposal for Organized Panel “The Social Life of Texts and Textual Practices in Modern and Contemporary Iran” Iranian Improvisatory Theatre and the Anachronistic Notion of Censorship Parallel to the theatrical writings of the nineteenth-century Iranian intelligentsia, the improvisatory comedy of jesters and entertainers known as Taqlidchis shaped modern theatre and European-style playwriting in Iran. Improvisation, the be-all and end-all of indigenous Iranian comedy, made actors also improvise their productions of European plays and anecdotes that they learned in the Qajar court. Loosely based on the plots and mainly based on the taste of the audience and the performance style of the actors, the results were improvised trans-creations that remained an oral tradition until the contemporary period. In current scholarship, the absence of text is explained as a result of state censorship. Primary sources such as travelogues, journals of the statesmen, celebration accounts, and official orders reveal otherwise. With the premise that political history has overshadowed Iranian theatre at large, this paper challenges the conventional connections between oral theatre and state censorship in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Iran, and draws attention to the theatrical reasons for the absence of text. I discuss theatrical productions with attention to performance traditions, acting styles, ethnography, wages, and actors’ demographics. The lifestyle and work habits of actors’ theatre and the class-based comedy of Taqlid can elaborate on the notion of censorship and its relationship to text and improvisation in the nineteenth century. How did exposure to European drama change indigenous Iranian comedy? Where did the audience encounter each genre of theatre? Who were the Taqlidchis? Of all the era’s entertainers, we know most about Karim Shirehi and Esm?l Bazz?z, the more famous jesters of Naser al-Din Shah’s court. Whom the jesters joked with, whom they were allowed to and encouraged to joke with, and for what reasons play directly into court diplomacy and the politics of censorship. There is also an important economic aspect; being able to joke with the nobility and the statesmen on the spot was relatively lucrative business. How did these matters contribute to the absence of text in Iranian improvisatory theatre?