Theatrical plays are a part of art and a kind of literature. In its artistic meaning, it is a form of art through which a literary text is narrated in various scenes to be presented to the audience. The actors represent these scenes with their movements on the stage to the audience. One can identify plays in another way: plays are an artistic phenomenon based on a purposeful encounter between the actors and the audience in a particular time and place to show a literary time span.
Playing a theatrical piece, apart from the other forms of art, begins from the very first moments of human life. If one is literate, smart, and wise, they undoubtedly fall in love with beauty; thus, we can see that imitating some people or animals is a part of people's natural behaviors. This shows that imitation and representation are natural human traits. Activities such as magical actions, religious rituals, weddings, parties and singing, painting, decorating the walls with stones, and presenting the gods with sacrifices are considered the early forms of theatrical plays.
Humans were also afraid of the natural events and those strange things that were around them since they did not know how they were created. Since they did not know the natural laws and disasters, they would feel a great deal of fear towards them bowing to those events respectfully and even worshiping them. The magic of art began at that time. According to their beliefs, among the live powers of nature, there are special spirits, like people's feelings and sensitivities, thus, they created dances and plays that resembled animals' movements. When they had enough food, they would dance and feel happy. All of this vigilance became a reason to create theatrical plays.
During the fourth and fifth centuries BC, the idea to create theatrical plays began to appear among the ancient Greeks. At that time, plays were performed with tragic themes. Those plays came from history and stories that were common at that time.
During those centuries, the Greeks and Persians fought with each other and later the Greeks won the battle and enhanced their territory. At that time, the Greek scholars, "Aristotle and Plato", strongly reviewed the plays to develop them.
Theatrical plays have been divided into two genres: "Tragic and Comedy". This division is tied to the Greek civilization. This can be seen in those ceremonies that used to be presented to one of the Greek Gods known as Diyonisyos.
During the season when grapes were harvested, they used to make wine and everyone would get drunk to party and have a happy time. When grapes were finished, everybody felt sad thus, playing tragic and comedy theatrical plays. Although plays developed in Greece, Rome, and all the other parts of the world, among the Kurds it took a step later.
In the 1900s, the Kurdish nation was able to protect its history through writing plays which began by presenting the first play in Hawler in 1905 named "The Darkness and The Light" directed by Abdul Rahim Hakari. Later, the play script of "Mame Alan" was published in "Jin" magazine in Istanbul in 1918. During the Kurdistan Republic, another play was presented in Mahabad named "Mother of the Land". In addition to these, in other parts of Kurdistan theatrical plays have been produced but they did not continue to work on them which was due to wars that happened in those areas and the banning of Kurdish art, literature, and language.
Kurdish plays in the Northern part of Kurdistan developed in the 1950s. This happened under "Mousa Antar's" supervision who wrote "The Black Wound" play.
Nowadays, many people are working on Kurdish plays in order to enhance this art which is due to the social situation of the Kurds and geographical reasons of Kurdistan and those occupying states that do not allow Kurds to develop in any field, especially in theatrical plays.
