Voices of Women from Afghanistan: Five Plays and the Stories That Inspired Them

Five female playwrights explore the lives of Afghan girls and women in the uncertain years before the Taliban retook Kabul.

When The Huffington Post began to publish the work of Afghan female journalists in English (through a programme called Sahar Speaks), director and scholar Lesley Ferris saw the potential for turning their stories into pieces of drama. This ground-breaking book is the result of that vision, collecting together five plays that offer a unique glimpse into the lives, creativity and resilience of Afghanistan’s women storytellers.

Dancing To The Blast by Monirah Hashemi
Dust Allergy by Nushin Arbabzadah
Behind the Blast Wall by Sonali Bhattacharyya
The Place of Shining Light by Yasmin Joseph
Parwana: They Bear All the Pain by Alia Bano

In her introduction, Lesley Ferris situates the plays in the challenging context of twentieth-century theatre in Afghanistan. Supported by reflections from the playwrights, and the original pieces of journalism that they are based on, the plays are illuminating, wry, surprising, and heart-rending. They open our eyes to what Afghan women wrestled with in the two decades between periods of Taliban rule, and remind us of what is being lost every day that women in Afghanistan are silenced. We hope that theatre-makers and educators at all levels will embrace these plays, and give them further life.

Lesley Ferris is an adventurous theatre practitioner with a lifelong engagement on issues of gender.

Jenny Morgan is a freelance editor.