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Go Inside Rehearsals with the Broadway Cast of THE KITE RUNNER
May 17, 2024
Based on Khaled Hosseini's internationally best-selling novel and adapted by Matthew Spangler, The Kite Runner comes to New York from two successful seasons in London's West End. BroadwayWorld checked in with the cast before they begin Broadway previews at the Hayes Theatre.
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Hello, I'm Richard Ridge for Broadway World. Khaled Houssini's best-selling novel
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The Kite Runner, has been adapted for the stage by Matthew Spangler. They begin
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performances on July 6th at the Hayes Theatre and we drop by the rehearsal
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room to meet the company with many of them making their Broadway debuts
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So you two are about to make your Broadway debuts in The Kite Runner. How
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excited are you? It's amazing. I mean I actually can't believe it. So excited, so
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blown away and excited. Are you right out of school? A few years, just a few years out
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This is like you're the first Afghan woman to make their Broadway debut, right
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I know, it's so weird to say first, but it's true. We had Robert Joffrey
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is Afghan, so from the Joffrey Ballet. So he actually took the Joffrey Ballet back
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to Afghanistan in the 70s and so he's somebody who I've always admired and
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looked up to. But you know, being a woman from Afghanistan, being an actress right
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now, especially when women are being stripped of their rights to be an artist
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be an actress, be, you know, they're still doing the news but they're making them cover up. To have them be stripped from sports and school and all of these other
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things and then to be able to kind of say, no we're here and we're gonna make
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these, we're gonna pave these paths and we're gonna make these inroads so the
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next generation sees somebody and knows that they can do it too. I'm on top of
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the world. I mean this is the, this is the one, one place that any theater person
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would want to be. So it's a dream come true, really. This is a best-selling novel
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Why do you think millions of people have fallen in love with this story? Because
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what it does is that it humanizes people, you know. It's not trying to
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aggrandize or demonize anyone. It's humanizing people and that's the beauty of art anyway. And I think that the novel does it beautifully and I am certain
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that the play will will just complement the novel very well. Anytime you write a
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play, you're lucky to get a production. You're lucky if that production is for
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three weeks and then you're super lucky if you get two productions. This sort of
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thing is not something any playwright imagines when they start writing a play. Oh my god, I can't believe it. I'm really, really excited and so honored to be part
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of a production that has such an amazing story about my country. So I'm very
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excited. I'm the cultural consultant and script advisor and I am enjoying working
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with the cast. We have a brilliant cast, very diverse and they are so hard-working
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and they're so devoted to representing the Afghan people in a respectful way
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It's so amazing to be here in New York and on Broadway. It's a story that needs
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telling and I'm just so excited it's gonna be told on Broadway. As an Afghan
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refugee, we landed here in 1982. Queens was my home for a couple years. Then we
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hop, skipped and jumped over to San Francisco and LA. This is my Broadway
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debut and I'm back in NY to represent. So Salah does the live tabla and drum
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music all the way through the show. He is on nearly the entire time. They're putting me to work
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Yeah, cracking. And then there's other things like voices that we're using. So
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incredible voices from the cast. Schwerbogen, which are like wind generating instruments. Singing bowls, big metal drums and other things that
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are actually in the show. There's something about theater that Giles Croft
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Damian Sandys and this entire creative team have done. You know, there are some
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narration passages where are straight lifted from the book that I'm saying and
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so the relationship of narrating to an audience is different than when you're
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reading to yourself. So there's a point of view and a relationship with the audience that might be different than one has with themselves. So that already
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theatrically is where we begin. And then the past and the present and how they've
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designed and how with such a minimal set and a few instruments have completely
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recreated a soundscape, a texture. I mean the designers on this show are stunning
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and these guys from England know theater. And I'm so excited that they are all making their Broadway debut
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