?To be or not to be.? Quoting this famous line from Hamlet seems apt here. For one, the subject, or rather the performance in question, is a work of William Shakespeare, and secondly, it?s as much a question of identity for the actors. They all belong to war-torn Afghanistan, dented by their own personal tragedies, enacting The Comedy of Errors on stage. They chose to rise above fear and persecution to show a side of their character and their nation, which is usually lost in bloody headlines and gory news stories.
If errors were the toast of the evening, the play was scripted amidst terror. With gunmen and suicide bombers laying siege to their rehearsal space, which led to the death of 12 people and the search for female artistes in conservative Afghanistan proving to be an arduous and lengthy process, yes, the odds stacked against the play seemed insurmountable. However, they overcame all these tribulations, and the fruition of their hardship: the stage at the esteemed London?s Globe Theatre this June. After a successful debut in India, the play in their native Dari, will be part of the World Shakespeare Festival, a celebration of the Bard where all his 38 plays will be performed in 38 languages by 38 companies to mark the Cultural Olympiad.
Directed by veteran French actor Corinne Jaber, the play?s journey began in 2005 when she created an Afghan theatre company, appropriately giving it the name Rah-e-Sabz, meaning ?the path of hope?. And Rah-e-Sabz?s adaptation of The Comedy of Errors is nothing short of a miracle or we dare construe it as a small flicker of hope amidst Afghanistan?s landscape strewn with strife, war, tragedy and death.
Agrees Jaber, ?Theatre, like any art form, is definitely a medium to help the people.? But she also points out that ?theatre in Afghanistan is almost non-existent. A theatre group from Afghanistan is actually a novelty, so initially it was difficult to get the cast for the play, especially women actors, because so few actually do work as actors?.
After the Taliban came into power, the regime ruthlessly outlawed any form of cultural creativity and though it has been a decade they were deposed, performers today, especially women, complain of threats from the group. Highlighting the challenge is Parwin Mushtahel, who had to flee her country after receiving death threats from the Taliban. ?My husband was killed by the Taliban because he refused to give up acting. I am living his legacy now. I refused to cow down then and I refuse to cow down now,? says Mushtahel, who now lives in Canada with her two children.
Then it was for obvious reasons that Jaber decided on The Comedy of Errors. ?We took a comedy because the Afghans don?t want to do tragedy, they have lived enough tragedy,? she says.
The play, recently staged at ICCR?s Azad Bhavan, brought forth Afghanistan?s rich repository of talent and its lively culture. It was a spectacle of Afghan culture: replete with traditional costumes and rich cadences from traditional musical instruments like rebab, zirbaghali and flute. It was a comedy of errors as you?ve never seen before. With the setting changed from ancient Greece to contemporary Kabul, the Antipholuses become Arsalans and the Dromios become Bostans in the classic farce of mistaken identity. Unlike the original play, the twins here are separated in a sandstorm rather than a shipwreck. The father of the twins comes to war-torn Kabul, searching for his sons. Like with most of Shakespeare?s plays, here also, the universal theme of loss finds an immediate resonance with numerous Afghanis who have lost their loved ones in more than three decades of war, which has ravaged the country. Shah Mamnoon Maqsudi gave a powerful performance, albeit short one, as Egeon (Ehsan), a father separated from his sons and wife. An extremely talented actor, he cuts the tragic figure of someone who?d welcome death if it would free him from his woes in the opening scene of the play, and in his next scene Maqsudi deftly changes into the role of Luce (Kukeb in the Afghan adaptation), the prodigiously fat maid to Adriana. This effeminate take on Luce was a successful one, as audience members erupted with laughter with his antics on stage.
Abdul Haq and Shakoor Shamshad as our twin Antipholuses bandied about with hilarious bravado and comic gusto. Shah Mohammad and Basir Haider were wonderful as the harassed, battered Dromios. The whole cast exuded uncommon comic confidence and abandon. This hilarious adaptation was suffused with notes of Afghan music, at times becoming one with the play, going beyond its mere role of complementing it. And the actors essayed their roles quite effortlessly across a bare stage, bereft of almost any props, to the accompanying music. It was a pleasing crescendo of comic mayhem.
However, there was a major drawback with this play performed in Dari. Because it was in a foreign language, an anomalous situation was created where the comic moment got lost as the audience members were busy responding to the sur-titles and not to the actors, taking the focus away from the action of the drama itself. The sur-titles could have been more succinct and terse, rather than drawl Shakespearean English.
The play had its limitations, but for all its flaws and glitches, it remained true in its core in presenting the Shakespearean comic world of concrete realism and dreamlike illusion. It also managed to convey that amid farcical moments, there can be a romantic, anguished picture of human vulnerability. But above all, Rah-e-Sabz?s performance should not to be measured by the success of the adaptation, rather it should be measured by the fact that the play brought together an ensemble of people, who despite having undergone losses and tragedies, chose to strive for better lives; it should be lauded for where it came from.