In Brazil, in April 2006, at the ECUM - World Scenic Arts Encounter, bearing the theme, “Theatre in Times of War”, Ana Texeira, Amok director presented a proposition for exchange of experience and reflection about theatre in conflict zones. Attending this event, there were men and women from theater in Iran, Israel, Iraq, Serbia, as well as artists from shantytowns in Rio and São Paulo who had had their work marked by violence. The impact of this encounter had repercussions for the choice of Amok projects. Thus, we decided to start a work about the theme of war. We began to conduct research and to experiment, and realised that it would be possible to embark on a longer trajectory, bearing in mind two or three creations on this theme.
In the staging of “O Dragão” (“The Dragon”), whose debut was in 2008, we dealt with the Israeli vs. Palestinian conflict. With Kabul, which we present now, we delve into an Afghanistan traumatized by 20 years of war and succumbed to the tyrrany of fundamentalists. In the former, we used statements and actual facts for the creation of a spectacular documentary about the pain inflicted by the war. In the latter, one particular event served as the starting point for creation of a fictional spectacular about four characters in search of dignity and humanity, for decades, confiscated by violence.
Kabul is a creation that arose from two sources: a book, The Swallows of Kabul by the Algerian writer, Yasmina Kadra and a real image from November 1999, a woman, covered in a blue burca (head-to-toe veil) being publicly executed in a Kabul stadium. This image, captured on a mobile phone video, travelled the whole world, revealing an act as cruel as it was morally and geographically distant.
We decided to dwell upon that image that disappeared from the news in an instant by bringing ourselves as close as possible to it, and even going beyond. Who was that wowan under the burca? What did her face look like? What was her story? Lifting the veil... What we tell in Kabul, could well be that woman’s story.
The play presents four faces of the war, four portraits of Afghanistan seen from inside houses, behind curtains and under veils.
‘The Dragon’ and ‘Kabul are two independent works, fruits of the same trajectory that reflect our desire to establish a dialogue with the present time, with its violence, and to seek, behind the cruelty and the pain, real humanity. |
|
