Voices of Women from Afghanistan - Five Plays and the Stories that Inspired Them

Five female playwrights offer short but intense experiences of the lives of Afghan girls and women in the brief, perilous years before the Taliban retook Kabul. When Huffington Post began to publish Afghan women journalists writing in English (through a programme called Sahar Speaks), producer Lesley Ferris saw the potential for turning their reports - unique glimpses of Afghan women''s stories and the creativity and resilience of Afghan women storytellers -- into pieces of drama. This groundbreaking book is the result of that vision. The five plays, and the journalism they''re based on are illuminating, wry, surprising, heart-rending. They open our eyes to what Afghan women wrestled with in the two decades between periods of Taliban rule, and remind us what is being lost every day that women in Afghanistan are silenced. In her introduction, Ferris situates the plays in the challenging context of twentieth-century theatre in Afghanistan, and laces her text with examples of Afghan women''s landays: short, often sarcastic poems composed on the fly in women''s gatherings, and unknown in the West.

Product details

• Authors: Lesley Ferris, Jenny Morgan
• Assisted by: Ferris Lesley (Editor), Morgan Jenny (Editor)
• Publisher: Methuen Drama
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Release: 11.12.2025
• EAN: 9781350547360
• ISBN: 978-1-350-54736-0
• No. of pages: 192
• Series: Methuen Drama Play Collections
• Subjects: Afghanistan, Asia, PERFORMING ARTS / Theater / Playwriting, DRAMA / Middle Eastern, Plays, Playscripts