Quite often I finish reading my book for the Sunday review on the car ferry crossing the Bosporus from Harem to Eminönü. But never before has the cover of a book attracted so much attention from my fellow passengers.
Maybe it was the title: “Shakespeare in Kabul.” It clearly aroused the curiosity of the middle-aged lady sitting opposite me. “Shakespeare in Kabul?” she said. “Is that something like ‘Mozart in Egypt’?” I guess so. Art has the ability to transcend national boundaries, true. But each of these projects were more than just taking the art of one culture and time and performing it before an audience drawn from a different culture and age.
“Mozart in Egypt” was a fusion album, mixing Mozart’s melodies with the sounds, rhythms and instruments of modern Egypt. Successful in France, where many young French citizens felt themselves to be a similar fusion of North Africa/Middle East and France, it didn’t really make much impact in Egypt.
But the story that Stephen Landrigan and Qais Akbar Omar, authors of “Shakespeare in Kabul,” tell of a few heady months in 2005 is one of art fusion making a huge impact in post-Taliban Afghanistan. We know that the story since 2005 has been a caravan of disappointment on the road towards violence and hopelessness. But in the rising tide of optimism that accompanied the bold celebration of the new Afghanistan anything seemed possible.
This almost blind positivity is captured by the opening descriptions of springtime in Kabul, with the almond trees in blossom, their delicate scent wafting across courtyards. The arts were beginning to flourish again; but most drama was for film or television. Theatre remained a great unknown that provoked intense curiosity.
“And that’s how it all started” — two crazy foreigners, playwright Landrigan and actress-director Corinne Jaber, decide to do Shakespeare.
Perhaps it wasn’t such a crazy idea after all. With his universal themes of the human heart and character, Shakespeare has long been able to speak to mankind. His stories travel through time and across continents so well that, to bring a freshness or innovation to a well-known story, directors set their productions in a different setting from the original.
A tragic love story works just as well in 16th-century Verona as “Romeo and Juliet” or 20th-century New York as “West Side Story.” Photographs of this week’s productions at the Royal Shakespeare Company in the UK show the cast of “The Tempest” in suits and ties, “The Comedy of Errors” in urban hoodies and woolen hats, and “Twelfth Night” in outfits from 1930s America.
Afghanistan has a long history of poetry, verse and storytelling. Rumi, famous in Turkey for his spiritual verse, was born a few miles west of Mazar-i-Sharif in the city of Balkh. Cadences of poetry are a vibrant strain of Afghan culture, with Afghans “slipping a couplet or two from great Persian or Pashto poets into any conversation.” Shakespeare is not so very far away from an Afghan’s heartbeat.
The resulting tale is upbeat, full of hope and triumph. But the shadows of how the story of Afghanistan will unfold are clearly seen even amongst the sparkling sunlight generated by the enthusiasm and joy of the first ever production of “Love’s Labour’s Lost” in Dari.
Now any production of Shakespeare, anywhere in the world, faces a host of problems. From choosing the play and casting through to fundraising and selling tickets, many things can cause a production to falter.
The easiest task was to choose the play. “Love’s Labour’s Lost” seemed perfect for Afghan culture: The embarrassment at the beginning hinges on a strong code of hospitality, the honor of keeping a vow gives the play its momentum, the need to woo in secret gives it its comedy.
Transplant a production to Kabul, and the problems seem myriad. Just take the issue of casting: “Love’s Labour’s Lost” requires an equal number of male and female actors — and they actually appear on stage together at the same time, still fairly shocking in the post-Taliban years. Any experienced actors were from low-cost TV dramas. The men had no hesitation in playing female parts, but finding women who had the talent to act was much more of a challenge.
Just as in a good Shakespeare play, this tale of a truly Afghan production of “Love’s Labour’s Lost” operates on many levels. The main plot is the story of how Afghanistan’s first post-Taliban theater company was formed and how they took local audiences by storm in a handful of evenings in the open air.
But it is the sub-plots that are fascinating. We learn about Afghanistan through the improvisations the prospective actors and actresses perform at their auditions. Some are tragic, some are comic, but none fail to move you.
Watching the actors grow and develop in technique and confidence as well as in their enthusiasm for the play creates a cracking book. But, reflecting the story of their nation, it is not all onwards and upwards, as Parwin Mushtahel’s tragic experiences make so clear.
“The balance of power between [male actor] Nabi Tanha and [director] Corinne becomes a drama of its own.” So, too, is the interplay between the East and West: “Corinne was on a deadline — the actors were on a journey of discovery.” Interpreter Qais often finds himself being begged by the actors to only translate for Corinne the positive things they say, not their frustrated comments about a Western style. Selective translation in both directions has the art of smoothing ruffled feathers!
Learning to listen more and finding ways to demonstrate respect are issues that any manager in Turkey has had to face up to, too. The excellent advice by veteran theatre director Peter Brook is apt for us too, when he told Corinne not to impose her ideas on the Afghans, but rather listen to the actors and take what they had to give to her.
The result, however, is an outstanding triumph. Its story is beautiful. The creativity and passion, courage and determination shown by all involved are a testimony to what might have been in that country if everyone, from foreign military commanders to local heads of clans had been able to have their outlook and lives transformed by the voyage of discovery that is Shakespeare in Kabul.
And this story ends with the most fascinating of thanks. “And thank you, William Shakespeare, for writing an Afghan play, even if you did not know that you had, and for giving us jokes that still make people laugh more than four hundred years after you wrote them.”
“Shakespeare in Kabul,” by Stephen Landrigan and Qais Akbar Omar, published by Haus Publishing (2012), 13 pounds in paperback ISBN: 978-190832308-8
(Today’s Zaman)
