Actress and Director To Speak on Staging Shakespeare in Afghanistan

March 11, 2013 — International actress and director Corinne Jaber will visit Allegheny College March 12-14. Her visit will include a free public lecture titled “With Shakespeare from Kabul to the Globe” on Wednesday, March 13 at 7:30 p.m. in Room 301/302 of the Campus Center.

Jaber will discuss her experiences directing two Shakespeare productions with Roy-d-Sabs, a theatre company in Kabul, Afghanistan. The most recent production, “A Comedy of Errors,” was also performed at the Globe Theatre in London in 2012 as part of the Globe to Globe International season, and it toured to the Theatre Festival Neuss in Germany as well.

The first production, “Love’s Labour’s Lost” — performed in Kabul in September 2005 – was the first Shakespeare play done in Afghanistan since the Soviet invasion in 1979. Both productions were performed with Afghani actors and actresses in Dari, an ancient version of Persian.

In addition to the public lecture, Jaber is facilitating workshops with theatre students and visiting classes in theatre and political science at the college.

During her presentations at Allegheny, Jaber will talk about the challenges of producing live theatre in a country devastated by more than 20 years of warfare and with strict laws determining the presence of women in public, both onstage and in the audience.

Jaber, who has acted with the Royal Shakespeare Company, was awarded France’s Moliere Prize for Best Actress in 2001.

Her visit to Allegheny is supported by the Sturtevant Charitable Trust Fund, the Departments of Communication Arts and English, the Middle East and North Africa Studies Committee and the Women’s Studies Program.