In 1956, Nasirian won first prize in the national playwriting competition for his play Bulbul Sargashte (The Wandering Nightingale). Over the next two decades, he wrote more than ten plays, many of which were staged in Tehran’s leading theaters. Alongside writers like Bahram Beizaei, Akbar Radi, Gholam Hossein Saedi, and Ismail Khalaj, Nasirian helped establish the foundation of modern Persian-language drama, synthesizing traditional narrative structures with contemporary social and philosophical concerns.
The Emergence of Iranian Television and People’s Theater
By the early 1960s, Iranian cultural institutions were undergoing major transformation. The establishment of the Department of Performing Arts and later National Iranian Television (NITV) created new opportunities for stage actors to reach broader audiences. Nasirian was among the first to join these efforts, becoming an employee of the Performing Arts Department, where he helped found the People’s Theater Group (Goruh-e Namayesh-e Mardomi) with Ezzatollah Entezami, Jafar Vali, Rokn al-Din Khosravi, and Abbas Javanmard.
