World of the Play: Afghan Culture and Etiquette

Guide to Afghan Etiquette with a Quiz!

Chai Customs

Overview of Formal Islam

A step by step guide to islamic prayer

Invocation when putting on new clothes
scroll down on this page for other invocations.

World of the Play: Afghan Demographics and Statistics

Weather in Afghanistan

Currency Conversion Afghani/US Dollar

Afghanistan Demographics

Afghanistan Education Statistics

World of the Play: 20th Century Overview of Afghan History

Time Line Afghanistan

Brief History of the Taliban

Brief History of the Opium Trade in Afghanistan

(if the above link doesn't work, cut and paste this link: www.silkroadstudies.org/new/docs/CEF/Quarterly/February_2006/Pierre-Arnaud_Chouvy.pdf)

Bacha Bazi: Articles on Boy Play

Articles:
Home Page for the Frontline Doc. with Interviews

The Rape of the Afghan Boys

Defending Freedom to Abuse
Bacha Bazi and Dynacorps

Clips:
Bacha Bazi Pashtun

Bacha Bazi Mazari

Bacha Bazi Northern Afghanistan

Twisted Tourists: Global Sex Tourism and Shady Diplomats
www.youtube.com/watch?v=-SjtkK1sZvw&feature=fvwrel (I can't get this to embed--just cut and paste the link)

Bacha Bazi: Synopsis

The eve of Obama's election finds Aaron--an American filmmaker--and Naveed-- his friend and translator-- in a small Afghani village. Although the two had initially planned to create a documentary film about Opium, Aaron's focus shifts when he meets Hafiz, a young dancer of Bacha Bazi. Aaron is both fascinated and revulsed by this ancient tradition, in which young boys dance in women's clothing and are then sold for the night to the highest bidder. Alternating between Dari and English, dance and language, fear and desire, Bacha Bazi brings a critical lens to American altruism and explores the often fatal consequences of inter-cultural mis-understanding.

You Don't Own Me: Leslie Gore

Singer; songwriter. Born May 2, 1946 in Brooklyn, New York, Lesley Gore grew up in nearby Tenafly, New Jersey. She was only 16 years old when she was discovered by legendary music producer, Quincy Jones. Though several versions of the story of their auspicious meeting exist—one source says they met at a party while another claims that Jones saw Gore singing in a hotel—Gore herself remembers that it happened through a string of lucky connections: "The short story and the truth is that I was taking vocal lessons here in New York… One day, instead of my lesson, the piano player and I went into a studio… and we put down some demos,… Those demos got to Quincy Jones through an agent… He listened to them, he called me, and we started to record."

"One song that stood out from the rest, however, was "You Don't Own Me," an unapologetic declaration that women are not objects that men can possess and control. Perhaps ironically, the song was actually written by male songwriting duo John Madera and Dave White, but Gore's powerful vocals and passion for the lyrics inspired teenage girls to not let boys push them around. The song held steady at No. 2 for weeks, surpassed only by The Beatles world-changing smash, "I Want to Hold Your Hand." As Gore explained the record: "When I first heard that song at the age of 16 or 17, feminism wasn't quite a going proposition yet. Some people talked about it, but it wasn't in any kind of state at the time. My take on that song was: I'm 17, what a wonderful thing, to be able to stand up on a stage and shake your finger at people and sing you don't own me."

(Hafiz?)

Playwright Biography

Gabriel Jason Dean plays have been produced or read at Theatre Row, Hangar Theatre , Aurora Theatre, Dad's Garage Theatre , Actor's Express, Horizon Theatre, FronteraFest, Source Festival, Essential Theatre, Relativity Theatre Concern, The Phoenix Theatre, Stage Door Players, The Process Theatre, Illinois State University, Emory University, Oglethorpe University and the University of Texas--Austin.

His adaptation of Beowulf is published by PlayScripts and has been produced internationally and in many states. He is the recipient of the 2010 Essential Theatre New Play Prize for Qualities of Starlight. A short play, PigSkin won the Samuel French Off-Off Broadway Festival and is published by Samuel French. His play for children, The Transition of Doodle Pequeno, was a finalist for the Kennedy Center Summer MFA Workshop. Other plays have been finalists or semi-finalists for the Seven Devils Conference, The O’Neill Theatre Conference and the Lark Play Development Center.

Gabriel's poetry, fiction and journalism has been published in Snake Nation Review, The Tower, Eclectica Magazine, The Melic Review, and Creative Loafing. Gabriel is the recipient of several distinctions for his writing including “Favorite Local Playwright 2009” in Creative Loafing--Atlanta, the James A. Michener Playwriting Fellowship, the City of Atlanta Bureau of Cultural Affairs Playwriting Award, the Porter Fleming Prize for Fiction, the Sidney Lanier Prize for Poetry, and a winner of the Horizon Theatre Young Playwright's Festival.

As an award-winning actor, he's performed in over 40 plays and musicals. A little known fact: as a singer, Gabriel debuted professionally at the age of 18 at Carnegie Hall singing the solo in Kirby Shaw's jazz arrangement of “God Bless America.”

He studied the interdisciplinary art of Musical Theatre at CAP21 at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts and earned his B.A. in Literary Writing with cum laude honors in Playwriting from Oglethorpe University where he also studied theatre criticism abroad at the University of Manchester in England.

Gabriel founded and facilitated the Odyssey Program, a drama/creative writing workshop for Morry's Camp, a non-profit camp for underprivileged inner city kids in New York. He is a co-founder of Relativity Theatre Concern in Atlanta, a member of the Dramatist's Guild of America, Theatre Communications Group, Austin ScriptWorks, the Playwright's Center in Minneapolis, and currently lives in Austin, Texas where— aside from pursuing his M.F.A. in Playwriting at the James A. Michener Center for Writers— he enjoys playing guitar to anyone who’ll listen and wrestling with his two VERY large, but lovable mutt dogs, Buster and Argo.