Story update - Youth from Kunar and Balkh provinces

Good to be back in the US for a minute.  Here's the latest:

We have been conducting workshops for youth in the provinces over the last month focusing on volunteerism and community improvement.  Then we bring youth groups from two disparate provinces to our facility in Kabul for an intensive week of working together.  We will do this with 25 provinces across Afghanistan over the next two years.  

In Kabul, with the two groups, we work on building presentation skills, developing viable Action Plans to address their chosen community issues, and writing proposals so they can get matching funds for the small "seed grants" that we give them. 

This past week, we brought together groups from Kunar and Balkh provinces.  Kunar is a very rural, extremely conservative Pashtun province on the Pakistan border.  Balkh is more a progressive northern province with Tajik, Uzbek and Hazara tribes.  Our point was to bring the youth from these diverse communities together to explore commonalities, discuss differences, and find unity in their goals of imagining and creating the New Afghanistan.  This is where our great theory of peaceful collaboration bumps into reality. 

To accommodate the conservative Kunar group, we conducted separate workshops for the females, which would have been fine, but the Balkh girls, being more urban and sophisticated, wanted to work with the guys as a team.  All the Kunar girls were here with their brothers (otherwise they would not have be able to travel) and were completely under their control.  We had many a long talk with the brothers about why their sisters couldn't do even the most simple, safe exercise with the men, even while staying completely covered.  The answer was that, if word got back to their village that their sisters had been face to face with strange men, it would be seriously dangerous for the entire family.  And who would bring back this information?  The other guys from Kunar, even though they are their friends!  The honor of the entire family rests on the woman's shoulders, and it seems no one outside the family unit can be trusted.  On the bright side, the women themselves were strong, well-spoken and brave.  I was more impressed with their calm and clear presentations than the men's.  It is a tragedy that these brilliant young women cannot make a single decision for themselves.... yet. 

Here is an interesting example:  On the first day, the groups presented their "community profiles".  The Kunar men made a fine presentation about how trees in Kunar are being cut down at an alarming rate which is leading to soil erosion and polluting the rivers.  The Kunar women did a presentation about violence against women with shocking visuals of women with ears cut off, noses cut off, beaten badly... and also spoke about how women are blamed for crimes they haven't committed and often traded to pay off debts.  Later, in speaking directly with the brothers of the Kunar girls, I asked why their project isn't about violence against the women and the women's project about the environment?  Which is more important to you, I asked, cutting a woman or cutting a tree?  Isn't a woman more valuable than a tree?  They actually were taken aback; I don't think they ever thought of it that way.  And now they are working on both issues together!  After that discussion, the Kunar men began presenting about violence against women... and the environment too.  Success!... a small one but mighty! 

Now both groups have returned to their provinces, and we will be monitoring their progress over the next month.  We feature theatre,  photography, mural painting, radio plays, poetry and music in our training as great ways for them to bring their issues to the wider community.  Communication... this is where the arts excel!  However, you can see the limitations of how, where, when and with whom they can present their art.

Our Afghan Training Team

Next we go to Parwan and Kandahar, two other diverse provinces, and then bring these groups together in Kabul for another intensive session.  Over the next two years, we’ll reach all of the provinces… inshallah.

Another Workshop Update from Kenya

During this workshop, for adults from ten different tribes in Kenya, Jessy Hodder facilitated 11 different activities from our Theatre for Social Development Training Manual. Keep reading to learn the participants' favorite activities and Jessy's thoughts on this experience! 

I facilitated a workshop today (3 hours) for 33 Kenyan adults (20 women and 13 men).  The youngest was 24, the oldest was 41, and the average age was 29.  They originated from 10 different tribes.  I originally thought this might create a little friction, but they seemed to work very well together.  They were not at all shy.  Most of them had great self-confidence, and they all wanted to be involved in the activities.  I was pleasantly surprised!  

Passing Energy 

Sports, especially those involving balls, are very popular in Kenya.  While they enjoyed throwing the ball of energy, I found they especially loved kicking the ball of energy around like a soccer ball.  I think this really underlines their love for soccer here.  Soccer is one of the top pastimes in Kenya.

The Wind Blows for . . . 

It took a few tries for them to understand the point of the game, but once they got it, they had a blast.  They told me afterwards that they want to use this activity in their own communities to get to know their people better.  However, I did find it interesting that if a man and a woman had to fight for a seat, the woman would generally allow the man to take it.  This meant that a lot of women ended up in the center of the circle!

The Prop Game 

They were very creative with the items that I put in front of them.  I introduced each item as "magic" - when a person touches the "magic" object, it takes on a new function/ it turns into something else.  A water bottle transformed into everything from a shoe polisher to a cell phone.  They were also very keen to move around and get down on the floor for their mimes.  However, the idea of "magic" in Kenya is an interesting one, particularly because of the history of shamans and witch doctors.  Magic, in many ways, is very real to people here, and they see it as a powerful force.  I think this might be something interesting to consider. 

Group Stop, Start, and Jump

The group listened SO intently, and they were very concentrated on getting it right.  They didn't want to stand out or let the group down.  Again - group mentality.  

Machines with a Theme

It was clear that some of their movements and sounds emulated parts of machines that can be found in town - drilling machines, generators, welding machines, and maize grinders.  

Secret Friends and Enemies 

Since I was shut down last time when I mentioned the idea of "enemy," I asked the adults to decide what we should call the "friend" and the "enemy."  They decided on "angel" and "disease"/ "death."  I thought this was an interesting choice, as death is something very common here.  It is a reality.  It is something much easier for them to talk about and confront than the idea of an "enemy."  

Awooga! 

This was a great activity to get them moving after lunch when they seemed a little sluggish.  Because of their skirts, it was a little difficult for some of the women to do a star jump.  They still gave it a good college try!

Making Group Shapes and Scenes 

The way they made a sofa set with their bodies was identical to the way in which the female survivors formed theirs in my last workshop.  I thought this was very interesting and may suggest similar perspectives between the groups.

Trust Walks 

When I asked the participants to pair up with someone, they chose partners of all types: men were with men; women were with women; and men were with women.  I was surprised to see some males pair with females.  I made the space in which they could walk smaller and smaller, until it became very difficult to steer clear of other leader/follower teams.  It made them giggle when they bumped into someone, but it caused the leaders to focus even more on keeping their follower safe.  

Snowballs 

As it was a bigger group, and our circle was very large, I asked them to throw their snowballs into the center and scramble to pick up a different one from the pile. We didn't have enough time to write out full stories, so I just had them write words or phrases that they could act out for the group.  The two categories which I felt were most successful were animals and objects.  One by one, as they felt led, participants would enter the circle and act them out.  All of the animals were those which you often see in our village (chickens, cows, goats, dogs, etc.), and the objects were all things that you could find on a village homestead (tree, gas stove, etc.)

Creating Puppets out of Found Objects 

They worked in four groups, each of which produced one or two puppets.  Materials included paper, cardboard, small boxes, toilet paper rolls, plastic grocery bags, trash bags, egg cartons, tape, scissors, and pens.  These are all objects that can easily be found on the streets.  They worked very well together, and they remained engrossed in the activity for at least 30 minutes.  When asked to use their puppets to create a small play, I found it interesting that the representatives from each group (puppeteers) were all male.  The plays all had moral significance and referenced God.

When asked which activities they enjoyed most, they identified the following:

1.  The Wind Blows for . . .

2.  Snowballs

3.  Machines with a Theme

4.  Passing Energy in a Circle

5.  Trust Walks

All in all, I was reminded that people draw upon what they know.  They do not often think outside of their immediate experience.  I think this is a good thing to remember when being creative so that we can find ways of helping participants think outside of the box.

  

Intern Spotlight: Katherine Connolly

Back by popular demand! The 2013 Summer Intern Spotlight highlights the experiences of our three incredible summer interns. This week, recent graduate Katherine Connolly discusses her many passions and the value of being label-less.

I’m from Maryland, “The Old Line State.”  The Line is the one drawn in 1763 by Mr. Mason and Mr. Dixon,  which eventually became the division between free and slave states east of the Ohio River. And yet by the time the Civil War rolled around, Maryland was part of the Union (with some help from President Lincoln and Union forces). So much for drawing clear lines.

Over a century later,  the ambiguity remains. Maryland is too southern for the North and to northern for the South. The Tourism Bureau will tell you we’re “America in miniature,” with almost every kind of environment except a desert. Maryland is a blurred area, a melting pot of the melting pot.  The No Line State.

Why a Maryland history lesson in a post about the great work of Bond Street Theatre? Well, for those of you who know and love BST the connection shouldn’t be that hard to make. It made perfect sense to me the minute I stumbled across the BST website. Here is an organization that encompasses everything I am passionate about; a theatre that blurs lines and defies categorization. A perfect and exciting mix of traditional theatre, clowning, education, development, empowerment, healing, international collaboration, acrobatics etc. etc.

As a Maryland girl, I am comfortable with blurred lines. In June I graduated from the University of Virginia with a double major in global development studies and drama. To the theatre community I was a development person and to the GDS world I was a theatre person. Even my majors were a mix of disciplines; The drama major included technique and theory in all aspects of theatre, and GDS, an interdisciplinary program, included any class that could justifiably relate to the study of development. The highlight of my education was attempting to draw the lines between the two fields and finding ways to make those connections that BST has understood for decades.

Throughout my internship here at BST I’ve loved discovering all of the hats BST wears. My tasks as a summer intern have mirrored the diversity of BST’s work.  I’ve had the opportunity to build upon my background in political engagement in Afghanistan by providing research and programmatic support for the recent Educating the Electorate Project. I’ve contributed to the domestic focus by working with Heddy, Ilana, and Gretchen to develop marketing materials for the new YAP show, Amelia and Her Paper Tigers. Michael, Joanna, and Olivia have allowed and encouraged me to explore my interests in varied projects from assisting with grant-writing and editing, to researching potential projects in South Sudan and Arab Spring nations, to mapping out the structure of the UN. The more I work in different areas, the more I come to understand the importance of BST’s work.

So if you can’t quite figure out what category to put BST in, I would say you’ve discovered the true gem of BST’s work. This is a group of artists that redefines, bends, blurs, ignores, challenges, engages and defies lines. A no line state of cross-cultural artistic organization. BST thrives on collaboration and imagination. In a world of separation, of borders between us and them, what better approach than artistic collaboration? BST sees a future lying  in the grey areas, and this Maryland girl is honored to be a part of that work.

Katherine taught some of BST's acrobatics to her cousins during their beach vacation.

Theatre of Ideas

Our wonderful Design and Management Intern Chris DeFilipp of Bennington College sums up his BST internship experience.

When I joined Bond Street at the start of January, I never expected to have accomplished and learned so much in the six weeks I’d be interning here. But here I am, five and a half weeks later, with only three days left before I leave Bond Street and New York City to head back to Bennington College for my spring term, and I have to say, I’m really going to miss this place. I can safely say that Bond Street will be an experience I’ll never forget--nor would I want to.

Last night, Joanna spoke at NYU Gallatin on the Power of Performance: Theatre in War Zones, and I had the opportunity to sit in on her lecture. It acted as a sort of closure for my internship, as many of Joanna’s stories were summarized and contextualized that evening. Stories I’d been told weeks prior were used to emphasize her points, and the whole talk wrapped up my internship perfectly. Her talk discussed the history and process of Bond Street, focusing particularly on the importance of physical and intellectual communication, with the physical communication of theatre allowing intellectual communication, the transfer of ideas between the performer and the audience, to be possible across many different barriers.

One of the many things that stuck with me was Joanna’s tale of the traumatized children in the refugee camps. They did not speak or understand English, so Joanna communicated with them through activities such as “follow-the-leader”. Through solely physical communication, the children were able to participate in activities, and those who were traumatized had the chance to come out of their shells--and eventually did so, at their own pace. Her story made me think about how physicality can manifest itself in theatre as a way to communicate ideas, and to involve an audience--both intentional and unintentional--in the experience. I realized how theatre from all regions can still have an impact no matter the audience--it’s not the language that we’re communicating in, but the way in which we’re physically communicating, the way we’re acting it out, designing the space and the world, that makes theatre a language of its own.

However, I think Joanna ultimately spoke to a much larger point, a point that encompasses this physicality of theatre and goes beyond it: that ideas can be communicated through the physical means of theatre. There may be a verbal or musical aspect, and the tone may vary from tragedy to comedy to anything in between, but for the most part, the main goal of theatre is to communicate and address, through a physical staging of a script or other dramatic material, certain ideas and opinions. For Bond Street, these ideas are typically issues that the groups they work with want to address, but for me these ideas are of science, mythology, literature, art, and of fields of thought that the audience may not be aware of. I feel that any story, even a love story, murder-mystery, or drama, can offer an audience more if it offers some sort of intellectual nugget of information they may not have known or thought about before. This is one of the things working with Bond Street has helped me to fully realize: that using theatre to communicate ideas is, in fact, very effective, and can help to offer more than just entertainment or knowledge to an audience.  It can offer a new way of thinking about the world around us.

Kandahar Theatre Update 3: Another Job Well Done

Michael writes from Jalalabad on the work with Kandahar Theatre.

After the ten day training and rehearsal period here in Jalalabad with Maiwand Theatre Company both the men and the women have done their first productions, and now are heading back to Kandahar to arrange four more performances each.

Despite losing a day over the recent anti-film protests (not here, as far as I can tell) we accomplished a lot. Having the Kandahar team here 24-7 meant we could have more time with them, and they were motivated enough to train and rehearse on their own some evenings and early mornings. For the men's group, we decided to use a script written by our Nangahar Theatre collaborator, Zhwandoon; and for the women we used the script we developed last year with the Nangahar women's team. The men's show promoted the civil and religious laws that favor the rights of women (forced marriage not allowed, no violence), and the women's show called for unity among women and an end to the "backbiting".

This was a good opportunity to revisit past work. Both shows were previously produced by other teams, and the directors of the previous versions were on hand to help remount the new adaptations. Thus they got to see how we adapt and direct based on the strengths (or, in some cases, the lack thereof) of different actors for the same material. We also could delve a little deeper in acting technique without having to create new material.

The men performed yesterday at the Lincoln Learning Center to 75 appreciative high school and college age students, while the women performed early today at a women's training center (I forgot to get the stats from Joanna, sorry).  Both shows went very well, in our humble opinions.

There are a great many new insights and stories associated with the process, and I'll try to get them down in future updates, but here is one from rehearsing the guy's show. Though the basic story line has serious intent, one actor played the clownish nephew, and he was pretty good in the part. The central object in this tale is a government published book on the laws of the rights of women. At one point the nephew is holding the book up by his face as the teacher points out this and that law. His uncle comes up and slaps him on the back, and he closes the book on his nose. Funny comedy bit (if they get the timing right, which is about 65% of the time). Well, in our last rehearsal before the performance, one of the actors points out that the book also has Koranic laws written in it as well (NOW he tells me) and some members of the audience might not think it so funny. Well, I tell them, you guys gotta be the judge on this; if you think it's a problem then we don't have to do the bit, BUT (deep breath here), if the point of the show is to see how much the audience really knows about what is written in the law, this will give you an indication of what they know. I bet most of them never heard of this book, much less know what's in it, that's what you are trying to tell them. So maybe do the bit, and see if indeed you get a reaction. Well, they understood my point, but the consensus was maybe they shouldn't do it.

Of course, come show time and the actors clearly forgot the entire conversation, because they did the bit anyway, and nobody stormed the stage. It didn't get much of a laugh either, despite the timing being pretty good. I think more than anything else the whole concept of live theatre is still new to live audiences, and they don't quite know how to react until the end, when they applauded enthusiastically.

We'll be here in Jalalabad until Friday with some follow-up with our local teams, and then head back to Kabul to check in with the teams there.

Despite whatever is going on around the world, it's still a pretty big world, and it's been safe and sound in our neck of the woods. Still, we'll keep our eyes open and ears close to the ground, and follow the advice of our friends.

Much love,

Women Against Women, Women for Women

Zan Zid Zan, Zan Barai Zan (Women Against Women, Women For Women) is the name of the play to be performed by the women’s troupe of the Nangarhar Theater Company. It goes up tomorrow at the Support Center for Widows. The script for this incredible play was essentially written by the six young pioneers of the women’s troupe. The story centers around two girls, Freshta and Nafisa, and their families as they negotiate decisions around education, early marriage and how to respond to gossiping neighbors.

The problem tree that the women created.

Freshta has just graduated from high school and been accepted into the medical program at Kabul University. She is the first person from her school to be granted admission into this highly competitive program, which usually happens only through nepotism and not merit. At the start of the show, Freshta’s parents, who are also educated, are fully supportive of their daughter until two neighborhood gossips purposefully sabotage their plans. The pair of backbiters, who ban their own daughters from going to school, spread rumors about Freshta and how her moral character is being corrupted through education, from dressing immodestly to running off with boys.  Her father overhears this and, worried about the family’s honor and reputation, suddenly reconsiders his approval.

Meanwhile, Freshta’s friend and neighbor, 12 year-old Nafisa is facing her own challenges. Her father, who is illiterate and poor, decides to marry her off to a very wealthy man, who is 40 years-old and already married with children.  He reasons that this would rescue their family from poverty. He forbids Nafisa from going to school, dismisses the desperate pleas of his wife against the marriage and violently abuses both of them.  Freshta learns about her young friend’s trials and seeks the help of one of her former teachers, a staunch advocate of women’s rights. The teacher visits Nafisa’s father at home and tries to convince him to cancel the marriage and allow his daughter to complete her studies. She points out girls’ rights to education and its merits, as specified in the Koran, and the minimum age (18) for a girl to marry, as written in Afghan civil law. Nafisa’s father is not persuaded. Meanwhile, the two gossips continue with their chatter and sabotage.

The mothers then intervene on behalf of their daughters and seek the moral guidance of the mullah.  He agrees to help.  One day, when all the men gather in the masjid for the mullah’s routine talk, he speaks about education and marriage. He reminds the men that it’s a farz or moral duty of every Muslim to seek education, both men and women. And that the Koran also decrees that a girl should be of mature age to marry and cannot be forced to do so against her will. Eventually, the fathers have a change of heart and allow their daughters to go to school. The girls are overjoyed and celebrate. The two back-biters also reassess their behavior and realize that it’s un-Islamic to gossip and that, as the idiom goes, gossiping about someone amounts to eating the corpse of your own brother.

The schedule of performances in Jalalabad is as follows:

4/23 – The Support Center for Widows
4/25 – AFCECO Safe House for Children
4/26 – Jalalabad Women’s Prison
4/27 – Women’s shura (council) in Surkhrod district
4/29 – Afghan Women’s Educational Center (AWEC), Behsud district

May we break a leg tomorrow! Stay tuned…

Sahar

A Day in the Life: Jalalabad Update 7

Michael writes (and photographs!) from the Theatre for Social Development project with Nangarhar Provincial Theatre in Jalalabad, Afghanistan.

So here is a photo entry that will give you a rough idea of a day in the lives of some a-typical Americans and Afghans in the city of Jalalabad.

Firstly: Joanna boarding the embassy arranged flight from Kabul to Jalalabad.  Okay, we don't do that everyday, but it did start our adventure here.

The Bond Street Theatre team: Joanna, Jamail - our Pashto-speaking translator from Kabul, and Sahar, our native New Yorker actress and Dari speaker.

And me - working hard at the Yellow House, our rehearsal space for the Nangarhar Provincial Theater men's company.  

The Yellow House is an oasis for the Nangarhar artists, founded and supported by the Australian filmmaker George Gittoes and the actress Hellen Rose.  Hellen tells a fascinating tale of their work in Jalalabad here: 

http://issuu.com/stagewhispers/docs/may_june_2012   see pages 12 - 14

As for the artists themselves, check out:

http://www.gittoes.com/ and http://www.hellenrose.com/

Also in residency at the Yellow House, an interspecies collaboration between Ezmarai the dog and Dali the monkey.

In the mornings we have been training a new team of young women -- 14 in the workshops, of which six are creating a new show. 

Yeah, the picture looks pretty static -  chairs, lecture, blah blah - but that has NOT been typical of the work.  The morning starts with a vigorous warm up by your's truly, followed by various exercises and techniques in physical theatre and forum theatre by the three of us (with translations by Sahar and Jamail).  

Though they were a bit shy and unsure at first, they quickly warmed to the work and have a great time.   As you may have gathered by the other entries here, photographs are a BIG problem for them-- the proliferation of Facebook and the internet and the misuse and abuse of photos of women in the past makes this very conservative culture very wary of cameras.   Hence, the best we could do above was the back of their heads.   So it goes.

The culture is not shy about photos of the guys, so here are two from our afternoon sessions with them:

THE WOMEN'S SHOW

Since April 12 Joanna and Sahar have been directing the six women in a new show, by the women and exclusively for women. Titled "Women Against Women, Women for Women" the show deals with how some women in the community can actually be the cause of problems for other women with the spread of false rumors, innuendo, and "back-biting". Performances starting next week will be at three women's centers, a safe house for children, and the Nangarhar Women’s Prison. 

 Here the women proudly display their certificates for completing the training part of our program:

THE MEN'S SHOW

I have not been so involved in creating the women's show, concentrating on getting the guy's act together.   Their show is called "Da Zangal Qanoon", Pashto for "The Law of the Jungle", wherein an auto-rickshaw driver and a lawyer get lost in the jungle, a metaphor for Afghanistan and a lesson in the virtues of the rule of law in a potentially lawless society.  It's pretty funny and serious at the same time:









The Jungle - and the Tiger about to eat a hapless Hunter

The Turtle, on left, wins the race because the corrupt official wasted the rabbit's time in demanding a bribe.  The Lawyer rejoices with the Turtle - because, in fact, the rabbit was trying to cheat the poor old Turtle anyway.  See, it can be pretty strange and complicated here in Afghanistan.

So complicated in fact, that I sometimes don't know what's going on, a challenge for directing.  Actually, I get enough translation and most of the actors speak some English, so communication has been pretty direct.

Here the Lawyer, on left played by Shams, is trying to avoid getting eaten by the Tiger, Hideri on the right.  No, he doesn't get eaten, he's actually a good lawyer (I told you it was strange in Afghanistan).

After the rehearsals, the tech savvy get crackin' with the wireless internet connection here at the Yellow House, sometimes past sundown before heading back to the Hotel - a 5 minute auto rickshaw drive away.

Finally:  

SOME R AND R:


A surprise birthday party for Sahar thrown by the Nangahar men's team.

Nice shot of J at a lovely family park outside of Jalalabad the women's team took us one afternoon.   The park was actually next to a Hydro-Electric dam on the Kabul-Jalalabad river.  That's the rushing melting snow behind me.

And that's it for this entry.  Performances start next week.

Watch this space.
Michael

Afghan Stars: Jalalabad Update 5

Sahar writes from Jalalabad.

Dear friends,

A long overdue update on my time here in Jalalabad! It’s been a whirlwind – beautiful and challenging and every swing of emotion.  But overall, it’s been really amazing. I’ve been journaling as much as I can because we don’t have great internet access. The hotel connection is slow and then we have limited access where we hold the workshops.

I’m writing you now from my room in the Spinghar, an old government-run hotel with a lovely garden abloom with the city’s famous and very aromatic orange blossoms. Jalalabad is known as “evergreen” for its year-round lushness and warm weather. And indeed, it’s a fresh respite from the dry and cool weather of Kabul.

How I dress in Jalalabad

In many ways, it’s vastly different from Kabul. It’s a predominately Pashtun area and you only hear sprinkles of Dari, which actually makes me feel good about my Americanized Dari (I tease my new friends here: Dari is my second language too). You also see much fewer women on the streets here, at least in the city proper, which is the only area we have visited so far. Most of the women cover their faces or wear the full burqa. You also don’t see many foreigners here, so Michael tends to stand out (Joanna and I are fully covered). 

Also, because of its proximity to Pakistan, Jalalabad is heavily influenced by Pakistani culture. The main method of transportation is the rickshaw, most women wear the shalwar kamiz and most families fled to Pakistan during the civil war.

As for the work, it’s really great, and all because of our colleagues here.  We’ve gathered a group of twenty teenagers from two schools. We work with one group of 15 in the mornings before school and then four in the afternoons following their school. In Afghanistan it’s generally like this, with school times varying before or after lunch.

The men’s group consists of members from the Nangarhar Provincial Theater, which is well-established and very active. Their work spans comedic and dramatic theater. Their ages range from 20 – 50 or so, and most have to have a second or third job since they cannot sustain themselves on theater alone. The company also has a film wing, which is extremely active and you can like them on Facebook at Afghan Stars!

The men's group!

☺ They are incredible--please check them out on YouTube too.

We work with each group daily for 3-4 hours. The first ten days constituted the training period, which included warm-ups, theater games, physical and dramatic theater techniques, Theater of the Oppressed techniques (including lots of image theater,) and lots and lots of dialogue. And, of course, fun! These are all new for the girls, while a few of the men participated in a similar workshop last fall in Kabul. 

The goal is that those girls who are interested and able will go on to create a play, which they will then perform in various local institutions for all-female audiences, such as women’s shelters, orphanages, rural shuras, etc. The men have more flexibility, but will perform largely for all-male audiences.  For example, they just did a free show at the park (for men only, except Wednesdays, when it’s women’s day) on the implications of the international community leaving Afghanistan.

The girls were really shy at the beginning, giggling behind their hands or saying they couldn’t or feeling totally ashamed to even so much as jump in front of each other (even though they’re all friends, or maybe because of that).  It’s taken some time, but it’s been beautiful to see them come out of their shells and feel uninhibited and now even lead exercises themselves! 

A scene about the Turtle and the Hare.

We did one exercise where we stand in a line and imagine a mountain ridge. Each person then steps forward and yells their name, tossing it over the mountain. Then all of us behind follow suite, stepping forward, yelling and throwing their name over the mountain. The person then does it facing the group, imagining the group as the mountain. The mountain of us then responds. It’s really empowering to hear one’s name like that. Afterward, many of them mentioned how courageous they felt doing this. Hearing their life stories, they already are some of the most courageous individuals I’ve met, but I think this is a new outlet for them to demonstrate that. They’ve also been so incredibly creative, coming up with wonderful scene work on subjects like illiteracy, gender equality and abusive teachers—issues that they self-identify as important to their lives--and proposing feasible solutions.  It’s so inspiring!

Oh, but there are challenges! For one, the girls are, I think understandably, extremely fearful about the implications of participating in theater at all. In Nangarhar province, which is very conservative compared to other parts of the country and still under a lot of Taliban influence, it’s just not done—it’s scandalous and implies inappropriate entertainment. The guys from the Nangarhar Provincial Theater though have been active for many years now and have worked hard to dispel these ideas. When the Taliban were in power, they performed secretly at weddings and such. But for the most part, they have been successful and are now ell-respected in town. Of course, some people still stigmatize their work and there are limitations with having to hire Pakistani actresses (which has its own social implications). But, comparatively, the girls really have a long way to go with gaining social approval for pursuing this art. They are the pioneers.

Stay tuned for more!