When it comes to theater, very little gets Ramzi Khalaf more excited than shows “where the personal meets the political.”
That’s certainly how he views “The Kite Runner,” the long-running stage adaptation of Khaled Hosseini's 2003 novel of the same name. Khalaf stars in the current “Kite Runner” national tour as Amir, the show’s narrator who spends decades feeling guilty about and eventually trying to atone for a cowardly act he committed as a child in Afghanistan.
“The Kite Runner” is closing out the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust’s 2023-24 Broadway in Pittsburgh series with its upcoming stay at Downtown’s Benedum Center. Tickets for shows starting Tuesday and running through May 12 are available at trustarts.org.
Matthew Spangler, the playwright who adapted “The Kite Runner” for the stage, will be in town Wednesday for a playwriting masterclass at the North Side’s New Hazlett Theater and a creative conversation at Downtown’s Trust Arts Education Center. In a related move, the Cultural Trust also recently launched its “A Sudden Gust of Wind” exhibition comprised of many multi-colored kites in more than 80 trees throughout the Cultural District.
Hosseini's novel begins with a young Amir’s kite-flying days in Kabul, Afghanistan, and follows him through his family’s forced relocation to the United States and his return to a Taliban-controlled Kabul. “The Kite Runner” is a multilingual show (without subtitles) that tasks Khalaf with embodying Amir from the ages of about 10 to 40.
Khalaf is a Juilliard-trained actor who grew up between New York City; Princeton, New Jersey; and Beirut, Lebanon. His knowledge of Arabic “ended up being almost a liability” in “The Kite Runner” because he wasn’t familiar with the show’s specific Farsi dialect.
He relies on the production’s choreography, his own physicality and memories of what he prioritized at certain ages to capture Amir at various stops along his redemption journey.
“You sort of have to trick yourself into doing it,” Khalaf said. “It can’t be intellectual. It has to be visceral.”
Spangler praised the show’s cast for bringing their A-games to a project that requires them to be “so committed to the moment.” That’s especially the case during sequences like the novel’s kite tournament in which everyone on stage must rely on nothing but their collective acting prowess to help audiences conjure their own visuals.
Spangler’s “The Kite Runner” debuted 15 years ago in San Jose, Calif., and he has been tinkering with its script ever since. Over time, he began to find that simply describing some of the novel’s more distressing elements often had a more profound effect on theatergoers than actually staging them.
“Where the scene is depicted, if it works, is in the audience’s imagination — which in some cases may be an even more harrowing place,” Spangler said.
Spangler is both a prolific playwright and San Jose State University professor who teaches courses about representation of refugees and asylum seekers in art. “The Kite Runner” “sits at that intersection” for Spangler and inspired him to craft a play that has now graced stages from Broadway to London’s West End.
It’s tough to talk about a play set in the Middle East without thinking about the ongoing Israel-Hamas war that has resulted in what organizations like UNICEF have dubbed a “humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip” and sparked protests at universities nationwide — including, recently, on the University of Pittsburgh’s Oakland campus.
That conflict is separate from the War in Afghanistan, which raged from 2001 to 2021 and was on the verge of breaking out when “Kite Runner” protagonist Amir arrives in Kabul with an opportunity to help right past wrongs. Khalaf acknowledged that his own relationship with the Middle East, its history and the region’s current circumstances couldn’t help but inform how he approached this story and role.
“While each of those countries has such a unique diaspora and heartbreaking, beautiful history, there are also so many common threads,” he said. “Colonialism, occupiers, extremism. That’s one of the reasons it feels so relevant in [the United States].”
For Spangler, “The Kite Runner” remains timely due both to how it “deals with certain universal feelings” and the unfortunate realities of Afghanistan staying in the news “for reasons that are largely not good for the Afghan population.” He brought up Hosseini’s continuing efforts to highlight “human suffering that’s still happening today in the real world” via his Khaled Hosseini Foundation designed to provide resources for vulnerable Afghans.
Though “The Kite Runner” doesn’t shy away from difficult subjects, Spangler noted that it’s “not just a slog through darkness.” There are also plenty of funny and tender moments for Pittsburghers to experience during what Khalaf described as a show that’s ultimately “about relationships, connections and how we navigate that.”
“It’s, look at this human experience and allow yourself to open to it and see what it does to you ...,” Khalaf added. “Anything that encourages empathy building and connecting is really important right now.”
Joshua Axelrod: jaxelrod@post-gazette.com and X @jaxelburgh.
First Published: May 6, 2024, 9:30 a.m.
Updated: May 6, 2024, 5:16 p.m.
