SHAKESPEARE IN KABUL

In 2005, a rising tide of optimism was sweeping through post-Taliban Afghanistan.Perhaps nothing captured this more poignantly than the performance ofShakespeare’s Love’s Labour’s Lost by a group of Afghan actors in Kabul. Afterdecades of war, oppression, intolerance and unimaginable devastation, men andwomen appeared on stage together—foreign journalists sang praises, Afghanaudiences cheered. Th e future held no limits, they all believed. Qais Akbar Omar,a writer, served as Assistant Director and interpreter for the French actressCorinne Jaber, who had visited Afghanistan on holiday and returned to direct theplay; Stephen Landrigan, a playwright, assembled a team of Afghan translatorsto fashion in Dari a script as poetic as Shakespeare’s. In this brisk, warm andfrequently funny account, Qais and Stephen capture the triumphs and foibles ofthe actors as they extend their passion for Afghan poetry to that of Shakespeare.But violence has not yet had its fi ll of Afghanistan and tragedy visits its menand women every day. And yet, in the midst of carnage and despair, hope stillremains—that things will one day be better. A tribute to that hope, Shakespearein Kabul is a moving narrative about a group of people who chose to believe intheir country’s future.