Actresses will get a chance to shine in national arts festival
Three years ago, Naseeba Ghulam Mohammed was not even allowed to go to school.
Today she is busy in the northern city of Kunduz rehearsing a play by an all-girl theatre group on the tyranny of the Taleban, who banned female education. The play is for a national theatre festival due to begin in Kabul next month.
Even though Afghan society remains highly conservative and still frowns upon women participating in theatre, the precocious 16-year-old has already directed, written or acted in 15 short plays for Kunduz's German-sponsored Mediothek Girls' Theatre - testimony to the changing situation of women in the new Afghanistan.
'To those people who want to keep us away from the stage, I say: 'You have no right to interfere',' said Naseeba. 'In Afghanistan today, men and women are equal. Women are also struggling to achieve their rights.'
It is no longer a problem for women to get an education or a job. But radical Islamists still object to women appearing on the stage, especially alongside men. At the university in Jalalabad earlier this year, about 15 young men stormed a play by a Kabul theatre group, smashed musical instruments and the sound system, and injured some actors. 'They were all Taleban boys,' said veteran actress Husna Tanha, still nursing a hand injury from the incident.
