Martha Graham at the Dehghan Theatre: a 1956 Farsi bill from Tehran

A Farsi poster announcing modern ballet by Martha Graham and her company at the Dehghan Theatre on Lalehzar, Tehran, on 19 to 22 Bahman. Filed with U.S. Information Agency posters, catalog date 30 January 1956, it names the Iran-America Society as ticket seller and co-sponsor (NAID 6948840).

What the sheet shows

A blue-toned photograph shows three dancers, one balanced on one leg in a lift. The rest is a theater bill: who is dancing, where, on which days, at what hour, at what price, and who arranged it.

بالت مدرن توسط مارتا گراهام و گروه بالت او

[...] محل فروش بلیط: انجمن ایران و امریکا

این برنامه با همکاری انجمن ایران و امریکا - انجمن هنری جوانان - اداره کل هنرهای زیبای کشور و تاتر آکادمی امریکا ترتیب داده شده است

[Archive's English translation:] Modern ballet by Martha Graham and her ballet company [...] Ticket sales location: Iran-America Society. This programme has been arranged in cooperation with the Iran-America Society - the Youth Arts Society - the national General Administration of Fine Arts - and the American Theatre Academy (ANTA).

The cut lines give the venue as the Dehghan Theatre (Tehran Theatre) on Lalehzar, four evenings from 19 to 22 Bahman, a start at half past eight, and tickets at 50, 100, 150 and 200 rials.

Four partners on the bill, no agency

The National Archives holds the bill in Record Group 306, with the U.S. Information Agency's posters distributed in Asia, Latin America and the Middle East, under a catalog date of 30 January 1956. The maker line names the agency and its State Department predecessor. The sheet names four partners: the Iran-America Society, a youth arts society, Iran's fine-arts administration, and an American theater academy. It does not name the State Department or the Information Agency. In FRAME's terms the source is blurred.

Culture as the message, disclosure as the question

FRAME tags it transfer: the standing of an American dance company is lent to the exchange program behind the performances. The archive files the purpose as warn or inform, and the theme as media and information.

Most of the sheet is simply useful. A reader learns what the show is, where and when, and what it costs. Culture is one of the better things a free country can send abroad, because an audience in a theater judges it for itself.

The question this file keeps raising is disclosure. Here the answer is mixed. The bill credits a binational society and an American theater body, so a careful reader could guess at American involvement. It stops short of saying that a government agency had a hand in it. Compare the 1957 Marian Anderson bill from Taipei, which names the State Department's fund outright, and the 1959 Louis Armstrong poster from Beirut, which the hub notes names no sponsor at all. The USIA posters abroad hub covers the wider program.