A ta'ziyeh performer carries a visible script through the entire performance, reading lines rather than reciting them from memory the way most theatrical traditions expect. It is not a lapse in polish. Holding the text openly signals to the audience that the actor is reading a role, not literally becoming a sacred figure, a distinction that matters directly to how the form squares with Islamic reservations about representing holy people on stage. The same logic runs through the costume code: villains wear red, protagonists green, characters marked for death wear white, and women's roles are played by men dressed in black, a visual grammar an audience already steeped in the Karbala story can read instantly. Performers are overwhelmingly amateurs, drawn from ordinary trades, who take up roles for spiritual reward rather than income, and the same production also sustains a wider circle of craft, costume making, calligraphy for the takyeh's banners, and instrument building among them.
Peter Chelkowski's 1979 edited volume, gathered from an international symposium held at Shiraz's own festival of the arts in 1976, remains a central reference point for this material and helped carry ta'ziyeh into serious academic study outside Iran; a 2002 Lincoln Center Festival production, staged with Chelkowski's own involvement, was among the tradition's first major stagings before a non-Muslim American audience. UNESCO inscribed the form in 2010.