Ta’ziyeh performance – a space for memory in the Iranian culture

The subject of the article is a (quasi-) theatrical performance – Ta’ziyeh – treated as a potential space for using collective memory. The performance itself is an original product of the Iranian culture whose essence is the free reproduction of historical events from Karbala that took place in 680 and became one of the elements constituting Shiite religious identity. In the description presented here I have focused on these characteristics of Ta’ziyeh which involve the issue of memory and the problem of recreating / processing future by the secondary witnesses to the past events. This approach to cultural phenomena of interest allows you to look at it from a wider perspective and identify those aspects that have not been studied so far, e.g. the proposed problem of feedback between the emotions of an individual and a group, or between corporal-ritual behaviours of an individual and a group, in both cases located within the widest frames of a convention. Research on the Ta’ziyeh performance as a space for memory allow better understanding of the emotional power of the performance itself, as well as its ideological, political and socio-cultural value