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Today in the West, we don't much stumble upon itinerant storytellers on the streets or in cafes, bringing to life Western legends and stories from Beowulf, Chaucer, Ovid, or the Bible. And yet the dramatization of the stories and legends of the Iranian people is exactly what happens in the streets and cafes of Iran.

Storytelling is the oldest oral art form. From the cave-dwellers who gathered around the fire to recount or reenact the day's hunting stories, to the most sophisticated theatrical extravaganzas, humans have communicated their stories to connect, inspire, heal, and educate. Each culture has its own storytelling traditions through which their national legends, myths, epic and folk tales, and sagas are retold.

Iranian traditions of storytelling date back to pre-Islamic times, before the seventh-century A.D. Arab invasion that brought Islam to the Zoroastrian Persian empire. They are too numerous to describe here, but the most common forms of public storytelling still practiced today--though to waning frequency--are Naghali, Pardeh-dari, and the performance genre of Ta'zieh, all of which are based on various literary sources of historical and religious events. The Iranian national legend is mainly composed of the tenth-century epic, the Shahnameh, or the Book of Kings, written over thirty-five years by the poet Ferdowsi, who managed, in fifty thousand couplets, to tell the history and myths of the Persian people from the time of Creation to the seventh-century Arab invasion, in the Persian language spoken before the invasion, some three hundred years prior to his effort. Religious stories about the lives, deeds, suffering, and death of Shi'ite Muslim martyrs are taken from sources such as the Rowzat'ol Shohada (The Garden of Martyrs), a book written during the Safavid rule (1501-1722) when Shi'ite Islam was established as the state religion, as well as many other manuscripts written by known and anonymous authors.

Oral storytelling was the main source of entertainment and community-building until the twentieth century when radio, television, and other media began replacing theater and, more specifically, oral forms of literary theater. Nevertheless, they do survive, and professional storytellers continue to rework and reinterpret the literary sources today.

Naghali (also spelled Naqqali) is one form of public storytelling. Traditionally, Naghals, or storytellers, were associated with a Patogh, a base, at one or more coffeehouses, where they would perform independent episodes of a longer story at designated times, which could take anywhere between seven and forty one-and-a-half- to two-hour sessions. Naghals may perform in two coffeehouses in one day, or two Naghals may perform at different times in the same coffeehouse. Naghals may also split up their year, spending some time in one town and some time in another town. Their clientele are regulars who attend the coffeehouse every day to hear the cumulative episodes of the story being told. Audiences, usually men, form attachments to a Naghal at a coffeehouse, at a specific time, but even if they don't stay to hear another Naghal at the same coffeehouse, chances are they would not go...