"In the dark times/ Will there also be singing?
 Yes, there will also be singing/ About the dark times."
 B. Brecht

Theatre as the traditional arena of self-mystification? Possibly, when it's merciless task is to present itself as ``political theatre", especially in the US, where political theatre probably does not exist in the way it is defined in Europe. Decades of middle-class angst and musicals have banished big ideas from the stage. But did Homebody/Kabul, Tony Kushner's arresting new play about the Taliban mark the return of political theatre or is the pudding somewhat over-egged?

Most American dramatists look inwards. Tony Kushner has always tried to gaze outwards. And not the least remarkable fact about Homebody/Kabul, written well before the events of last September, is that it attempts to embrace and explain the history, culture and ethos of Afghanistan.

Kushner not only offers a portrait of a gentle-spirited, factually voracious, syntactically eccentric woman who claims "I love, love the world", he also establishes his main theme which is that Afghanistan has always been a vital intersection at the mercy of history, geography and spiritual absolutists. But, after the brilliance of the first part, the play settles for mere competence as we see the homebody's husband and daughter pursuing her to Kabul to which she has been ineluctably drawn. She may have been beaten to death by unknown assailants. She may be still alive and secretly married to a Muslim. But, having started as a record of an ungovernable obsession, the play aims to become a political mystery about innocents abroad in a strange land.

Along the way, Kushner makes many sharp points. He sets the action in 1998 shortly after Clinton had bombed Afghan terrorist camps as a reprisal for attacks on American embassies; but we are reminded that Clinton was no more successful than Bush in tracking down Osama bin Laden. Kushner also shows how an unknowable country like Afghanistan exercises a peculiar hold on the western imagination. And running through the play is the idea that every creed and faith, from communism to Islam, wants to dominate Afghanistan but that in the end it eludes even its conquerors.

And political or not, Homebody/Kabul is dramatic. A lot of plays have laugh lines but only a few have gasp lines. Without a doubt the biggest gasp line in New York theatre for many seasons came at the December premiere. Manhattan theatergoers have seen and heard a lot, and Kushner too is no stranger to controversy - his most celebrated piece, Angels in America, brought al fresco sodomy to the National Theatre and Broadway. Still, only weeks after the destruction of the World Trade Center, jaws dropped when one of his characters cried out: 'You love the Taliban so much, bring them to New York! Well don't worry, they're coming to New York!'

How will the audience react to these lines from now on? Who is going where and why NOW?

Anyone learned anything?  (I'm asking, because that's what political theatre stands for: learning)

But there is still Eve Ensler; writer of ``The Vagina Monologues"and herObie Award-winning smash hit Necessary Targets.

Eve Ensler tells the story of two American women, a Park Avenue psychiatrist and a human rights worker, who go to Bosnia to help women confront their memories of war and emerge deeply changed them.

Melissa, an ambitious young writer, and J.S., a successful but unsatisfied middle-aged psychiatrist, have nothing in common beyond the methods they have been taught to distance themselves from other people. As J.S. begins to feel compassion for the women whose tragedies she has been sent to expose, she turns on Melissa, who finds safety in control. In an unexpected moment of revelation, J.S. and the women she is supposedly treating find a common ground, a place to be taught and a place to learn.

Necessary Targets is said to be a groundbreaking play about women and war--about the violence of dark memories and the enduring resilience of the human spirit. Fair enough!

But, the reality is here, right in our conscience, in our minds, hearts and right in front of our eyes, visible 24 hours on all TV channels, and that is, what is. War!

What else can I add?

  ©2003 Andrea Kapsaski

For more commentary and articles by Andrea Kapsaski, check the Archives.

Andrea Kapsaski is a Ph.D scholar, translator,
theatre and film producer, and a hell of a cook.

© 2003 Aviar-DKA Ltd. All rights reserved (including authors' and individual copyrights as indicated). No
part of this material may be reproduced, translated, transmitted, framed or stored in a retrieval system for
public or private use without the written permission of the publisher and the individual copyright holder.
For permissions, contact publishers@scene4.com

.

All articles are archived on this site.
To access the Archives