On the Front Lines marked a turning point in the evolution of theater and cross-cultural learning at The Ohio State University (OSU). The project’s purpose of bringing the voices, lived experiences and cultural contexts of Afghan women to our campus and the world through theater was met with immense interest and enthusiasm. Ohio State hosted six events in the fall of 2019 as part of On the Front Lines (OTFL), including the performance of two plays commissioned for the project.

Lesley Ferris, Distinguished Arts and Humanities Professor of Theatre, director of the On the Front Lines project, worked with Sahar Speaks, an Afghan journalism project that provides training, mentoring, and publishing opportunities for Afghan women reporters.” A central question asked is: “How can the world see the true Afghan story, if there are no Afghan female writers, photographers, camera operators, or TV  producers at foreign news outlets?”  (http://www.saharspeaks.org/). Their stories were published and permission was achieved to adapt them for the stage. Four plays were produced in London and the 5th and 6th plays became the centerpiece for this project.  as  Sahar Speaks: Voices of Women from Afghanistan.  Lesley Ferris co-founded Palindrome Productions, a London based theatre company that produced the first four plays.

The main event was the performance of two one-act plays about daily life in Kabul for Afghan women. The plays premiered at Ohio State University during Fall of 2019 and were accompanied by an array of academic events delving into the history and current context of Afghanistan (See below). Local community members and students across multiple departments at Ohio State flocked to the plays and related events. The result was a rich synthesis of the fields of theatre, history, journalism, and literature.

The Department of Theatre and the Middle East Studies Center decided to create the project in response to the current geopolitical situation of Afghanistan and its people. They organized this collaborative project with faculty and staff in the Department of History, Communications, the Near Eastern Languages and Cultures (NELC) Department, the Wexner Center for the Arts, and the Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies Collection and the Lawrence and Lee Theatre Institute at the University Library. The Global Arts and Humanities Discovery Theme awarded a grant to ensure the artistic vision of the Director could be fulfilled, especially with regard to the theatre productions (See below, Oct. 7) but also the outreach events and engagement with students and faculty.  The following list of events feature top scholars on topics relevant to Afghan history and culture, including the history of Afghan theatre, theatrical practices that the military uses for simulating field operations in Afghanistan, and a talk on “the Great Game.” Complete information on the guest artists and scholars can be found on this page.

Events:

10/03/2019      Lawrence and Lee Theatre Research Institute Annual Lecture: Nushin Abrazadah: Shakespeare Among the Suicide Bombers: The Turmoil of Theater in Afghanistan, introduction of speaker by Jeanine Thompson, Professor of Theatre and Director of the Theatre Research Institute and Beth Kattelman, Curator of the Lawrence and Lee Theatre Research Institute and Jeanine Thompson, Director .  Audience: 91 people in attendance.

10/07/2019      Sahar Speaks, commissioned by Palindrome Productions of London and adapted for the stage from stories by Afghan women, two one-act plays (see images below). Audience: 279 people in attendance.

Parwana: They Bear All the Pain by Alia Bano

Dust Allergy by Nushin Arbabzadah

Discussant: Meenakshi Ponnuswami, Associate Professor of English at Bucknell University

10/07/2019      Dutch photojournalist Joël van Houdt presented “Kuja Meri?” (Where are you going?): Afghan Refugees Across the Globe, Discussant: Amie Ferris-Rotman, Moscow correspondent for the Washington Post. Introduced by Ann Hamilton, Distinguished University Professor in the Department of Art, Post-talk discussion led by Philip Armstrong, Professor of Comparative Studies. Audience: 98 people in attendance.

10/08/2019      Professor Natalie Alvarez, Ryerson University: Strategic Culture: Staging Afghanistan to Simulate War, Introduction of the speaker by Professor Scott Levi, History Department Chair, Discussant: Professor Peter Mansoor, General Raymond E. Mason, Jr. Chair in Military History. Audience: 50

10/31/2019      Distinguished Arts and Humanities Professor of Theatre, Dr. Lesley Ferris: On the Road to the Pentagon: The Great Game Afghanistan. Introduction of the speaker by Professor Scott Levi, History Department Chair. Audience: 42 people.

11/04/2019      Film Screening of A Thousand Girls Like Me, by Sahra Mani (2018) Introduction by Janet Parrott, Theatre Department Chair, Discussant: Linda Mizejewski, Distinguished Professor of Women’s Gender and Sexuality Studies. Audience: 35

Next Steps:

On the Front Lines: Performing Afghanistan will continue engaging authentic voices of Afghanistan and beyond through theatre and will build community around the issues brought up in the stories and plays.  The Middle East Studies Center plans to host related discussions on politics, culture, and global issues related to issues raised in the plays. The inaugural faculty forum and subsequent events will bring faculty together to define research questions which engage the local community. [Plans for the first meeting to take place spring semester of 2020 were derailed by the pandemic and the closing of the university.]

We are currently evaluating our learning from the first phase of the project and are seeking ideas for the next phase. We are in consultation with the faculty involved in the first phase and may invite new input from faculty in Near Eastern Languages and Cultures Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies, and other departments. The public engagement and interest in the plays is our major consideration moving forward as we see this as an avenue offers cultural knowledge in an effective way. As we continue to assess this project and related activities we are brainstorming creative educational design and the use of e-portfolios and other means to deepen student learning.

Film making is the next big step in the project, and we will be posting further updates about a documentary and other shorter films. We need support to make the next phase happen, in terms of both time contributions and financial. We are seeking students and community members who have skills in that area, financial contributions, and other forms of support on our website page inviting people to contribute as a member of our community.

We want and plan to keep the momentum going. A video artist filmed the project and the footage  includes the performances, lectures, and interviews with the actors, playwrights, directors, artists, journalists, and project leaders. This material needs to be edited and plans are underway for that to happen. The final addition to On the Front Lines is a documentary that demonstrates our process and methods for utilizing multiple cultural perspectives, with all the pitfalls encountered as well as its gratifying aspects We plan to create a public-facing digital portal and e-portfolios for Ohio State students to track and reflect on their learning and experiences.

Plans are underway for all six Sahar Speaks plays to be produced in London. We hope this could align with the next London Theatre Program in the summer of 2021. If so, students from the university will be involved and plans for using a video artist to document this follow-up project of “On the Front Lines: Performing Afghanistan.” We are also planning technologically mediated activities to connect with audiences using a combination of video and virtual live engagements in order to accommodate new realities for theatre created by COVID-19.

Please follow the project at on this site and Palindrome Productions. Think you could help? We need many forms of support – sign up here.

Please read the final report for complete details.

Parwana: They Bear All the Pain by Alia Bano, Director: Ji Rye Lee, Dramaturg: Anna Guse. Above: Premiere on Oct. 7, 2019, Rithika Gopalakrishnan, left; Mehek Sheikh, right. Photo credit: Kirk Moldoff

We are now in the second week of our project, On the Front Lines: Performing Afghanistan, including the premiere performances of two new plays on Monday.  This project contributes to the question of “how to communicate about culture” and works primarily through the means of theatre and storytelling.  Thus, one could say we are “performing culture” because we are communicating a cultural context which is unfamiliar to much of the audience. We have made every effort to maintain authenticity and to reach audiences members coming from a number of backgrounds, spanning from little or no knowledge of Afghanistan to experts and insiders.

One of our goals for the project is to demonstrate to a wide audience, both academic and non-academic, the immense importance of learning from (not about) cultures. Sahar Speaks plays provide an intimate but respectful – even mundane –  look at Afghan experience. Their words and actions have the ability successfully form dialogues with diverse audiences, even those without much knowledge of Afghanistan. Yet, they delight and touch those with extensive lived experience in the country or with its diaspora communities. Hardly an exoticizing approach. At one point in “Parwana,” the characters confront the audience and criticize the colonizing Western gaze by refering to the famous portrait of Sharbat Gula.  The problems are quite universal but set in the particulars of Kabul.  One of the ways we achieve this is by working with Afghan authors and creators, as well as researchers and reporters who have spent time in the field.

We based these performances on the actual life experiences of Afghans reported by Afghan women of Sahar Speaks.  The image below is of Zari and Parwana, Protagonists of Alia Bano’s “Parwana: They Bear All the Pain” performed for the first time this past Monday at the Wexner Center for the Arts. “Parwana” was directed by Ji Rye Lee.  “Dust Allergy,” written by Nushin Arbabzadah, and directed by Rina Hajari, was also performed for the first time. Both plays were commissioned and supervised by Lesley Ferris, director of on the Front Lines.

Zari and Parwana, Protagonists of Alia Bano’s “Parwana: They Bear All the Pain” performed at the Wexner Center for the Arts at the Ohio State University on Oct. 7 2019

I learned from the teachers in my dissertation study that in learning about culture through its own creativity, truth becomes more accessible. The plays are how we use this approach in On the Front Lines.  But we don’t stop there, of course. As scholars and educators, we are also exploring Afghan history, the history of Afghan theatre, the use of theatre for cultural awareness education, perspectives on Afghanistan from journalists and photojournalists, film makers, and perhaps more.  These disciplinary lenses underly the events which have taken place and will take place in the coming month.  We will be dedicating future posts to the researchers, artists, and scholars, who have contributed to this project and the ways in which cultural knowledge can be both shared and scrutinized.

Playwright and internationally recognized scholar of Afghanistan, Nushin Arbabzadah, explores the experience of living abroad and then returning home in her new play about Afghan/U.S. cultural crossings, Dust Allergy, to premiere at OSU on Oct. 7th. She was inspired by a the stories Afghan women journalists of Sahar Speaks, a project to promote their careers internationally and bring their much-needed perspectives into the mainstream.  In a recent interview with Arts and Sciences, Arbabzadah shared that when she “listened to the stories of Afghan women who returned (to Afghanistan) after spending more than a decade in the West” she realized how much her own experiences abroad had changed her.

Please join us on October 7th as “Dust Allergy” is staged for the first time.  It is a tender story of compassion, even pulling one’s heartstrings with the sub-plot of a three legged puppy. Many issues are raised, such as child poverty, women’s rights, and imperialism. Nineteen-year-old Arzo, the protagonist, recently returned from the U.S. and is living again with her mother in their family home in Kabul. Arzo’s experiences in the U.S. cause her to observe facets of Afghan culture from the perspective of outsider. We learn about these observations via a conversation with her mother about their current living situation and her need to find paid work.

Arzo’s reason for traveling to the U.S. was to learn English with the goal of obtaining work in Kabul paid in U.S. Dollars. The economic disparities related to language and culture reveal a colonizer/colonized relationship between the two countries, and the complicated situation that creates for Afghans – needing to cross cultural boundaries in order to obtain financial and physical security. The one-act play unfolds by way of the conversation between mother and daughter and is rich with metaphor, symbolism, and many direct and indirect references to Afghan cultural traditions. This is an excellent story to “unpack” with regard to the challenges of navigating cultural difference, the meaning of cultural relativism, and the phenomenon of reverse culture shock. Arzo’s personal drama of re-entry into Afghan culture also reveals many layers of the evolving Afghan story with regard to class, gender, modernity, and globalization.

Arbabzadah’s aforementioned work is a part of Sahar Speaks, two plays commissioned by Palindrome Productions of London and adapted for the stage from stories by Afghan women, these two one-act plays–Parwana: They Bear All the Pain by Alia Bano and Dust Allergy by Nushin Arbabzadah–offer a rare and revealing look into Afghan women’s lives. On October 3rd Arbabzadah will deliver a lecture on the history of Afghan theatre, which in her words, “may go to sleep but never dies in Afghanistan.”

Image of girls on Afghan street. Kabul street Jan 2014 by Michael Foley via Flickr CC2.0 https://www.flickr.com/photos/michaelfoleyphotography/12053283655

These performances are part of On the Front Lines, a series of events centered on Afghanistan, organized by Lesley Ferris, Art and Humanities Distinguished Professor of Theatre and sponsored by a Global Arts + Humanities Discovery Theme Creation Grant. Co-sponsored by The Department of History, the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures, the Middle East Studies Center, the Wexner Center for the Arts, and the Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies Service and the Lawrence and Lee Theatre Institute at the University Library.

Mark your calendar! October 7th 2019 is the official start of the On the Front Lines: Performing Afghanistan project. Join us for the opening events (details below)! These include two one-act plays based on stories written by Afghan women and adapted for the stage, images of Kabul presented by photojournalist, Joël van Houdt, and authentic Afghan culture, as we watch, socialize, and discuss. Complete information on the guest artists and scholars can be found on this page. We are also hosting top scholars in the field of theatre to discuss topics relevant to Afghan history and culture, including the history of Afghan theatre, theatrical practices that the military uses for simulating field operations in Afghanistan, and “the Great Game.”

The aforementioned plays were commissioned as part of a larger project to bring Afghan women’s voices to the public more prominently through storytelling and theatre. The project, On the Front Lines: Performing Afghanistan, is directed by Lesley Ferris, Art and Humanities Distinguished Professor of Theatre at Ohio State University. Palindrome Productions produced several of the plays in London prior to this project. The first three plays, are based on stories written for the Huffington Post by Afghan women journalists who completed training through Sahar Speaks.  Now Ohio State University is home to this project which will engage and build an intellectual community around the issues brought up in the plays.

On the Front Lines: Performing Afghanistan, Opening Events, October 7, 2019

4:30 p.m.
Sahar Speaks: Voices of Women from Afghanistan
Film/Video Theater
Wexner Center for the Arts

Playwrights Nushin Arbabzadah and Alia Bano adapted these works for the stage, giving a rare and revealing look into Afghan women’s lives. Following the performances, the playwrights, with invited guests, join the post-performance discussion with Lesley Ferris, Art and Humanities Distinguished Professor of Theatre at Ohio State University and other invited guests. Since 2016 Dr. Ferris, as Artistic Director of Palindrome Productions (London), commissioned and produced the first four plays for  Sahar Speaks. This event is free but we ask that you obtain a ticket through the Wexner Center.

5:45 p.m.
Chai Khana Social Hour
Wexner Center for the Arts Lower Lobby

Afghan afternoon tea and refreshments.

7:00 p.m.
Joël van Houdt: “Kuja Meri?” (Where are you going?): Afghan Refugees Across the Globe
Film/Video Theater
Wexner Center for the Arts

Dutch photographer Joël van Houdt’s discusses his gripping exhibit documenting the journeys of Afghan refugees around the world following the despair resulting from the United States withdrawal from Afghanistan. This event is free but we ask that you obtain a ticket through the Wexner Center.

Supported by a Global Arts and Humanities Discovery Theme Grant

Presented by the Department of Theatre and the Middle East Studies Center with support from the Department of History, Near Eastern Languages and Cultures (NELC), the Wexner Center for the Arts, and the Middle East and Islamic Studies Service and Lawrence and Lee Theatre Research Institute at the University Library.

Panjir Valley, Afghanistan. Photo by Tom McClimans. All rights reserved.