Comic relief in war-torn Kabul

Nine members of Azdar troups put together performance in a country that had been locked by battle for nine long years.

KABUL: Two Afghan policemen remained petrified and stunned standing in front of a plastic cup. But this was not some farcical scene from the battle against the Taliban — it was the sketch from a new clown show in Kabul.

A performance, put together by nine members of the Azdar troups was an improbable gesture in a country that had been locked by battle for nine long years.

However, efforts to foster a revival of Afghan theatre are currently underway. Reportedly, the native theatre enjoyed a golden age in the 1960s and 1970s before being hit by war and then the Taliban Islamists who enforced the closure of theatres during the mid 1990s.

Azdar was formed in 2006 by Guilda Chahverdi, vice president of Kabul’s French Cultural Centre and drama professor at Kabul University, with a group of her former students.

Its previous productions include a staging of Antoine de Saint-Exupery’s The Little Prince in Kabul but Chahverdi turned to clowning for the latest show in a bid to expand the actors’ skills.

“The best students want to study medicine or business, while the less able end up studying the arts,” Chahverdi said, adding that some Afghans see clowning as “shameful”.

“Until last year, my family would not let me do theatre,” said one of the actors, 19-year-old Gulab.

“But when we put on The Little Prince in Kabul last September, they came for the first time. They laughed and clapped, like everyone else.”

Some of the actors in the Azdar troupe are also involved in Parwaz, a company of puppeteers who make regular tours around schools in Afghanistan’s provinces, staging shows based on social issues that inculcate aspects of war and corruption.

Despite their passion for acting, many of the actors balance their love for theatre with the acknowledgement that they may not be able to stay on stage for long. “I want to keep on acting. But if that’s impossible, we will go back to being farmers, like our fathers,” said another actor, Nasir.

Like Nasir, many of the actors in Afghanistan live with the constant threat of their short lived theatrical careers coming to an end at anytime.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 4^th, 2011.