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To achieve the stated goals and objectives (see under history & mission section) in efficient manner, AHRDO has applied a series of unique art methodologies with different but ultimately complementary components. Some of these art-based methodologies include: a) AH 7808 AH 7808 is a conventional theatre play based on the script by Irish playwright Dave Duggan. Adapted to the Afghan context and translated into Dari and Pashto with the support of UNAMA and the AIHRC, the play toured around Afghanistan in 2008, and has been revived by AHRDO and the International Centre for Transitional Justice (ICTJ) with the full support of Dave Duggan in 2009. The play itself uses a medical metaphor as the protagonist, Sardar, is waiting for a surgical operation to have the truth ‘cut’ out of his body. This metaphor illustrates the way in which many Afghans continue to physically carry the pain of Afghanistan’s past conflicts inside themselves and how victims in general struggle to find a way to confront the past and move on with a different future. During the play, Sardar is visited by seven ghosts of people who were killed during the last thirty years of conflict: these ghosts will not leave him alone until their stories are heard and their suffering acknowledged. Adopting a victims-centred approach, two Kabul-based victim’s groups were involved in every aspect of the production, culminating in two of their members assuming the role of actor during the play. The audience throughout the various regions was mainly made up of victims’ families and ordinary Afghans who were captured by the words of the ghosts and by Sardar’s response, their personal history mixing with the one shown on stage. At the same time, the play challenged the audience to recognise the pain suffered by many Afghans and to consider how to deal with decades of conflict as individuals and as a society, with the main objective to find ways to be able to move forward as a country. As a result, the theatre performances were followed by discussions with the audience where many victims found an opportunity to tell their stories, express their needs and desires as well as their wish for justice and peace. b) Theatre of the Oppressed (TO) Theatre of Oppressed (T.O) is one of the most important forms of participatory theatre used in the world today. Designed as a rehearsal for reality, it was developed to bring ordinary people together, in order to create a space for dialogue, and an ultimately empowering and mobilizing environment based on the values of freedom, humanity, integrity, and mutual respect. Founded by the Brazilian theatre practitioner and visionary Augusto Boal, T.O has a long-standing tradition of exploring difficult issues employing various forms of participatory theatre games and exercises. Its main belief is that every human being is genetically equipped with what professional actors use on the stage: their voices, their bodies, their movements and their gestures. Moreover, it is based on the notion that all human beings have the capacity to observe themselves in action and can consequently develop strategies for change for those situations that prevent them from realizing the satisfaction of their individual and collective needs. Therefore, theatre and all the other forms of art must not be the exclusive property of self-proclaimed experts but be made accessible to everyone willing to engage with them. In fact, it offers everyone an aesthetic instrument to analyze their past, in the context of their present, and subsequently to invent and shape their future according to their needs, without waiting for it or having it imposed on them by those who think they know better. The explicit aim is to ‘humanize humanity’ by empowering participants to become the main characters (protagonists) in their own lives and breaking the dependence on hierarchical relationships, subsequently giving a refreshingly new meaning to the somewhat overused and empty expression ‘agents of change’. The Theatre of the Oppressed is now widely used all over the world and has been applied in a variety of human rights fields such as: education, conflict resolution, gender, children’s rights, psychotherapy, literacy and health. In Afghanistan, AHRDO uses this new methodology as a means to contribute to social change by empowering local communities to take part in the definition, interpretation and transformation of their community conflicts, and through this empowerment making a contribution to the democratization and stabilization of Afghanistan. c) Playback Theatre (PT) Playback theatre is a different form of participatory theatre in which the audience is invited to tell personal stories or anecdotes from their own lives and watch them enacted on the spot by a group of actors. Originally invented by Jonathan Fox and his wife Jo Salas in the United States in the early 1970s playback theatre has grown steadily ever since and is practiced in many different countries around the globe. Its main tenant is that human beings have the need to tell their stories in order to construct meaning in their lives, which is why any story significant to the teller, whether happy or sad, mundane or transcendental, can be told as part of a playback theatre performance. Playback theatre celebrates individual experience and the connection between people through their stories. Similar to Theatre of the Oppressed, playback theatre is open to both professional actors and people with no acting experience, promoting the idea that artistic expression must not be the sole property of professional artists. Furthermore, in every playback theatre workshop or performance, improvised music is an essential element, with an array of different instruments available for the performers to experiment with. In a country in crisis such as Afghanistan, Playback Theatre makes a courageous attempt to bring the people closer together by creating a space where these can explore their common humanity via the sharing of personal stories with sincerity, empathy and respect. At the same time, by inviting people to tell stories that investigate a situation from different perspectives and even opposing accounts, PT paves the way for radical social encounters in which issues of conflict, reconciliation and forgiveness can be explored. Finally, PT provides an opportunity for marginalized groups to have their stories validated and actively participate in the creation of historic memory. d) Infinite Incompleteness Infinite Incompleteness was developed by the Afghanistan Human Rights and Democracy Organization (AHRDO) in response to an increasingly entrenched culture of impunity in Afghanistan. After more than three decades of violent conflict with millions of victims, accountability for massive human rights abuses remains elusive while the voices and stories of the victims continue to be silenced and therefore unacknowledged, adding insult to injury and preventing any kind of individual and collective healing, reconciliation and ultimately justice from becoming but an unreachable utopia. Infinite Incompleteness follows in the footsteps of these valiant efforts while at the same time stemming from AHRDO's desire to produce and stage a non-fictional theatre play that would use the real words and stories of some of the victims of Afghanistan's seemingly endless experience of violence. Artistically, the play emerged as the result of the bringing together of different forms of theatre, specifically Playback Theatre and Documentary Theatre. Documentary theatre is theatre that uses pre-existing documentary material and is most often based on people's real stories and words. For the development of the script, Playback Theatre was used to invite victims from different parts of the country to share their experience of war. Over the course of 20 performances in various parts of the country, 120 stories were told and a total of 10 stories were carefully selected, edited and arranged in a basic storyline that takes into consideration Afghanistan's ethnic and linguistic diversity (the three main language are spoken by the characters during the performance), the different conflicts starting from 1978 up to the present as well as promotion of both male and female voices. These real stories were complemented by a parallel storyline consisting of a series of fictional actions and events carried out by the characters in order to create a narrative that is set in the past, present and, ultimately, future of the country. Furthermore, contemporary Afghan and Iranian poetry as well as music were incorporated into the play in an effort to promote the strongest possible atmosphere and subsequently resonance for the original target audience, the countless victims of war in Afghanistan. The four actors are staff members of AHRDO and have been working full-time with different theatrical forms for a period of between 2-4 years. None of them has a professional theatre background but all of them have found in the theatre a powerful and peaceful weapon for change in Afghanistan. Dr. N. Sharif is an ethnic Pashtun and has been part of the struggle for a democratic Afghanistan since the outbreak of violence in the country in 1978. He lost several of his brothers during the various conflicts and was often imprisoned and tortured for his involvement in political activism. S.J Mohamadi is a deeply pious Sayed who spent most of his life as a refugee in Iran and only recently returned to Afghanistan to study economics and make a contribution to change in the country. M.S. Rajabi comes from the much oppressed Hazara ethnicity, lived more than half of his life as a refugee in Pakistan and is Afghanistan's first-ever Playback Theatre actor. Lastly, Z. Yagana is one of the few female performers in the entire country. Ms. Yagana is a single mother of two and was married against her will at age 13. She eventually fled her abusive husband and has since made the theatre her very personal way of addressing the difficult situation of women in Afghanistan. Considering their combined life experiences, the four performers are a performative element in itself.
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