Plays
Nine interconnected scenes to destroy any lingering remnants of belief that the collapse of Afghanistan was inevitable, sudden, or unpredictable. Over 15 years the conflect devolves as international interest wavers, national interests shift, sabotage flourishes, and corruption ruins any prospects for stability - Much less civil development. These scenes illuminate the Terms for a corrective reckoning of the human costs of this catastrophic failure of imagination. Each reflects on what the world has agreed to accept in Afghanistan. The consequences will be grave.
As a male couple in the Afghanistan of twenty years ago, Farhad (an Afghan mountain wildlife guide) and Daniel (a British wildlife documentary filmmaker) wanted and needed to resist conventional labels from the first moments they recognized an interest in each other. On this evening, twenty years later, instead of preparing for his imminent return to Afghanistan, Farhad playfully recounts the unusual origins of their family as a fantastical bedtime story for their visiting grandchildren: A tale of a rare freshwater seahorse and a visiting merman. Complications involving one of their sons arise as Farhad's departure approaches. Through flashbacks and present-time scenes, we observe how the family has handled the tensions around identity, both from pressures at the start of their relationship, and in the current context of a troubled son who long-believed he was responsible for the difficulties.
Successes
Khowaja Ebadullah Hayat's and Roy Henry's full-length play The Considerations Of A Seahorse, has received a Special Mention by the Jury of the Carlo Annoni International Playwriting Prize (2023).