Love's 'Labour' not a lost cause in Kabul

Shakespeare ... in Kabul?

Granted, it is an idea that takes some getting used to. But there is much about modern-day Afghanistan, a Central Asian country emerging from 23 years of war, that William Shakespeare would have found familiar: autocratic leaders playing great games with the lives of men, doomed lovers defying ethnic or tribal taboos, nobles and servants trading bawdy jokes, and devious warlords and ambitious mistresses hatching foul plots.

And an ambitious Afghan theater group is hoping that their fellow Afghans - in a two-week theater run of "Love's Labour's Lost" that started Wednesday - will find deep connections to their own society today.

"Shakespeare was a great writer, a great performer, an actor, not famous only in England but all over the world," says Wali Faisal Azizi, the handsome actor who plays the nobleman, Dumain. "Shakespeare's secret is that beside knowing about people of his own country, he had insight into the human heart. That is why he is great."

He smiles. "Obviously, I can't tell you that Shakespeare was an Afghan," he says, "but he was a great writer."

Part of that greatness is the universality of tales like "Love's Labour's Lost," a drama set in 15-century France but still relevant to today's Afghanistan. The story is centered on four noblemen who take a vow to study, fast, pray, and not see women for three years. This highly unnatural, and vaguely Talibanesque plan, falls apart just as soon as four beautiful princesses arrive in town, and the noblemen fall instantly in love. Pride prevents them from breaking their vow openly, which leaves them easy prey for the princesses and their bag of tricks. The remainder of the play is a hilarious roundabout of mistaken identity and ham-handed romance.

Mullah Omar may not find any of this amusing, but then again, he's not invited.

Director Corinne Jaber says the idea for putting on "Love's Labour's Lost" was the happy result of a trip last spring, in which she met some local actors and held a few acting workshops. Right away she noticed that the Afghan actors were brilliant at improvisation, and were aching to take on meatier roles. But nobody, after 23 years of war, wanted to do tragedies - so that left the comedies. And they wanted to do it in the Afghan dialect of Farsi, called Dari.

"It does not make sense in a country like this where there's just been war and destruction and no culture for almost 25 years to hold a European play in English," says Ms. Jaber, a Canadian actress. "I think the only reason to do a play like this is to give it to them," the Afghans, in their own tongue. Jaber envisions the group taking this play and others to those few Afghans cities where theater, and particularly the inclusion of women actors, would be welcome.

Getting a Persian translation of the play proved easier than expected. An Iranian scholar who spent his school years at Oxford had translated all of Shakespeare into Persian, and a team of US, European, and Afghan drama lovers quickly set about making the Bard work in an Afghan context.

The first thing they did was to change the nationality of the characters from Frenchmen to Afghans. One scene in which the noblemen disguise themselves as a troupe of Russians was seen as distinctly unfunny, so the Russians quickly became Indians. But the central theme of the play - love - required no translation at all.

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