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05-28-08 | 09:42 pm

$750 Donated

Because of everyone who has participated so far, there will be three fewer children in the world suffering from cleft lips. There's still quite a way for this site to go, but officially making this donation has reassured me that this website has made a difference in the world. In the end, that's all that matters.

Amir

02-19-08 | 08:49 pm

Vocal Warm-ups

Our cast never began a show without taking some time out backstage to perform vocal warm-ups. No one wanted to damage their voice by getting on stage and overworking vocal chords that weren't ready. In order to kill two birds with one stone, we practiced repeating tongue twisters to hone our focus and articulation. To see a sample of our little backstage ritual, check out the video here.

Amir

01-03-08 | 10:40 pm

The Movie is Out!

The Kite Runner movie is now in theaters, and as promised, all $725 dollars that have been raised up to this point will be donated to Smile Train. The website will continue to be updated, however. If the Kite Runner play is ever revived, this website would be the perfect forum to write about the experience. Until then, I have plenty more behind-the-scenes material for all the fans of the Kite Runner.

Amir

11-12-07 | 11:37 pm

Kite Flying in the Park

One of the Kite Runner rehearsals was devoted solely to kite flying. Hassan, Young Amir, our director, our kite-fighting coach Edris and myself were all scheduled to meet at the park for some hands-on kite training. The purpose of this rehearsal was to try and develop some muscle memory in our arms as we flew kites and recited our lines. We wanted to be able to draw on the experience when we were on stage in order to bring the kite fighting tournament to life. There was no way we were going to use our authentic Afghan kites for fear of crashing and destroying them, (they were needed as props for the show), so we used a couple of one dollar mini-kites from Walmart. It was a great experience and our director was able to take some footage of us practicing in the park. Check it out here

Amir

10-24-07 | 05:06 pm

Pre-Show Pep Talk

There's something in the theater world known as the "Second show slump". Opening night performances often exude energy since all of the actors are anxious to perform for a real audience for the first time. When that opening show ends, actors tend to feel comfortable and confident in their ability. They relax. Unfortunately that relaxed attitude carries over into the second show and it is almost always mediocre compared to opening night. Our director is an actor himself and understands how easy it is for actors to fall into that trap, so before every show he would come talk to the cast and pump us up. I decided to bring my camera backstage one day to capture one of his speeches. Check out how Matt kept the cast motivated throughout our run here

Amir

10-10-07 | 01:06 pm

Kite Cake

After Kite Runner's closing night performance, the cast decided to get together one last time for a cast party. It would be an informal event at our stage manager's place and food and drink would be handled potluck style. When I arrived, chips and salsa in hand, I witnessed the result of having a potluck without deciding beforehand who is bringing what. As I placed my bag of chips next to the four other bags of chips, I wondered which of the twelve assorted liters of soft drinks I would pour myself. Not wanting to start in on the chips right away, I went to the kitchen to find something more substantial. The only thing on the counter was a bag of dinner rolls. Yum Yum. I turned to leave the kitchen, wondering how far away the closest fast foot restaurant was, and was met at the door by the girl who played Hassan. In her hands was a tray, and on that tray was a chocolate covered cake with a frosting-drawn image of a kite flying through the Afghan night sky. Wow. No one wanted to cut it and "ruin" the work of art. In the end it was eaten, but not before Hassan and I left the party temporarily to go get a real dinner. Thanks Subway.

Amir

09-25-07 | 07:56 pm

Miracle Cure

Many members of the Kite Runner cast are seasoned veterans of the theater. Almost every actor has had multiple years of show experience and has learned how to properly prepare for shows. In this kind of atmosphere, it became easy for us to overlook the fact that one of our cast members didn't have any shows under their belt. It was a fact that would become all too clear on the morning of our Wednesday matinee. In walked Atif, our Young Amir, holding a steaming cup of some deeply-scented concoction. There was no way that the stuff he was drinking could be ordinary tea. Our director followed Atif into the room and explained to the cast that Atif had lost his voice. I later learned that he had been singing to the radio with his friends in a car at the top of his lungs. I wanted to ask him what he was drinking to help, but it was more important to me that he save every word for the two shows we had scheduled for that day. Fast forward to the following day and Atif's voice had almost returned to normal. He'd also brought another dose of his miracle brew. I had to find out what that stuff was. Atif said the mixture was a family recipe and that he'd have his dad email it to me. True to his word, I got an email later that day with these instructions:

6 cups of water
quarter teaspoon salt
one-inch piece of elm-bark (called MULATHI in Indian grocery stores)
two-inch stick of cinnamon (or equivalent in powder form)
4 small cardamoms
1 big cardamom (called big Lachi in Indian grocery stores; looks like a black spider)
4 cloves
4 peppercorns
may add sugar if needed.

Boil all the ingredients. Let simmer for an additional ten minutes and turn off heat. In case of cough, cold or sore throat, drink three or four "hot" cups in one day. Can be kept in refrigerator and microwaved before use.

His dad went on to tell me that it was good not only for the throat, but for coughs and colds too. Awesome.

Amir

09-10-07 | 08:30 pm

Recognition

I stood outside Matt Spangler's office door staring at the Kite Runner poster taped to it. It made me realize that it'd almost been a year since he auditioned the Kite Runner play. I checked my watch. 10:05am. He must still be in traffic. I turned to Lani, the actress who had played Hassan, standing beside me. Her gaze communicated the same thought. The day before, Matt said he wanted to tell me about the new play he was directing. When I told Lani about the meeting she decided to tag along and say hi to Matt before class, but neither of us expected him to be late. With the clock hitting 10:15am without a Spangler in sight, Lani had to leave for class. As she trotted down the hallway she passed another girl walking up the hallway towards me. This girl had seen Lani and I exchange parting words, and when she reached me she jerked her thumb over her shoulder like a hitchhiker and asked

"She was in Kite Runner wasn't she?"
"Yes she was."
"She was the little boy!"
"You got it."

I internally applauded her powers of deduction. Of course, having played Amir in Kite Runner, I was too easy to identify. My hair looked the same, I still had a goatee, and even my "costume" for the show was a contemporary pair of khakis with a button-up shirt. If that weren't enough, I was also on stage for every second of the play! The actress playing our Hassan, on the otherhand, no longer resembled anything close to her character. For the show, her hair had practically been a military cut, she wore flat shoes to exaggerate her shortness, and her eyebrows were filled in to give them a bushy, masculine quality. When compared to her currently curly locks of hair, high-heels, eye shadow, and lipstick, I didn't think that anyone could tell she'd played the boy Hassan.

The mystery girl paused for a moment and tried Spangler's door. It was still locked. She sat down in the hallway across from me, both of us now waiting for the tardy professor. I learned that she had to turn in a make-up final from last semester and needed the passing grade to continue playing soccer for the school team. She asked me why I was waiting for Spangler. Here was the perfect oppurtunity for me to discuss Kite Runner with someone who had seen the show, but first I had to steer the conversation back in that direction.

"Well I did a show with Matt last semester and he wanted to see if I'd do another one this semester."

As I spoke, I gestured towards the Kite Runner poster on Matt's door, but she maintained eye contact and immediately followed up with:

"Oh yeah? Which show?"

Which show? Uh-oh, this was about to get embarrassing, but I could do nothing but tell the truth:

"I was in Kite Runner actually."

Here it comes. Any second. The flush of red to her face, the "Omigosh, DUH!", that wide-eyed look of recognition...

"Really? Who were you?"

Ouch.

Amir

08-31-07 | 11:55 pm

Articulation Workshop

So much of Kite Runner is in the language. From the beginning it was our director's intent to preserve as much of that language as possible. To us actors, that meant making sure each and every one of our words could be heard and understood clearly. It's easy to get lazy and start throwing lines away by mumbling past them or delivering them too quickly, especially when your line is something like "Let's go" or "Yeah, C'mon". To communicate the make-or-break importance of being heard, our director scheduled an Articulation Workshop into our rehearsal schedule. We spent a couple of hours taking blocks of dialogue, slowing our rate of speech by 50%, stressing important words, and punching every single syllable of every single word so that nothing was lost. By the end of the day, we'd learned to properly pace our rate of speech, and that slurred and garbled speech could be eliminated by being conscious of your facial muscles while speaking your lines. You can watch some video of the Kite Runner actors honing their articulation talents here.

Amir

08-24-07 | 06:27 pm

Throat Coat

About midway through the rehearsal process, I started to get uneasy. Although my lines were completely memorized, I was still daunted by the potential vocal sabotage that goes hand-in-hand with having lines on every page of a 77-page script. I never left stage. Ever. By looking at our performance dates, I realized I was to talk for over 2 hours straight every night for almost 5 nights in a row. And not just normal speech - I would be projecting and articulating every syllable of every word. What if I lost my voice? I started holding back at rehearsal, apprehensive of wearing myself out. When the cast got a break for intermission, our stage manager, Paul Sawyer, came to talk to me. He noticed the change in my vocal quality and asked if was getting sick. I explained my concerns as he nodded and took out a notepad. As he was writing he told me that one of his friends was an opera singer and that she had developed her own little secret to sustaining vocal health during a show. He ripped the piece of paper from the notepad and handed it to me. It read:

Throat Coat Tea (2 bags) + 1 Tbsp Honey
Gargle before swallowing
Repeat 2-3x per day

I went to Safeway that night and got two boxes of Throat Coat. From that point forward I never held back during rehearsals or shows, confident in the opera singer's formula. And I never lost my voice.

Amir

08-16-07 | 11:53 am

The Official Movie Trailer

The movie trailer for Kite Runner was recently released and you can check it out on YouTube here. A while back I had the opportunity to witness a real kite fighting tournament in Fremont, so I can say with some authority that the kite-fighting clip shown in the trailer is not what kite fights look like in real life. I can't wait to see how they put this movie together. Because Dreamworks bought the rights to Kite Runner, their writers have free reign to step in and edit the story however they see fit. Khaled was allowed to give suggestions, but he didn't have the final say. Two and a half months left! Here's the movie poster they're going to use:

Amir

08-07-07 | 08:21 pm

Atif's Baba

One morning, while browsing the school paper, I happened upon a coupon for a juice bar that had just opened up close to campus. I stopped by after my running class, and just as I'd finished ordering a smoothie, I heard someone call "Amir!" from one of the tables. The show had just finished its opening weekend and I was excited to hear the opinion of someone who had clearly seen the show in it's first few days. I wasn't prepared for who I was about to meet. He introduced himself as Atif's dad! This was the man who was the real-life father of the actor playing "Young Amir" in Kite Runner! He told me that he loved the show and I learned that he was even a math professor at SJSU. Luckily I had my camera on me, so I slipped it out to take this little memento.

Amir

07-28-07 | 05:15 pm

Learning the hard way

We didn't use American kites as props for the scene of the Kite Fighting Tournament. Our director drove down to a store in Fremont and bought authentic Afghan kites that had been shipped there straight from Afghanistan. During the tournament scene, many of these kites were planted in the audience. When cast members got their kite strings "cut" on stage, they'd turn into kite runners, dash into the back of the audience, then turn around and sprint back up to the stage with their physical fallen kites. This became more dangerous than we imagined. Afghan kites are built to be flexible flyers, and that means using ultra-thin paper to both easily catch the wind and remain buoyant in the air. We should have known that combining delicate kites with relay-racing up and down the aisles wasn't a good idea to begin with, but it took a poorly-placed palm against one kite's flimsy surface to finally make us realize it. The head-sized hole in the orange kite was taped up and from that day forward the dashes back to the stage became hurried trots.

Amir

07-19-07 | 06:12 pm

The Bet

Sometimes, when you rehearse something so often for so many days in a row, you start to take it for granted and not give it your all. There was one scene in particular that would always fall into this kind of slump, and it happened at the beginning of the show. As Amir regresses to his childhood, the first memory he has that's shown on stage is a younger Amir and Hassan playing tag with each other. They run around the stage, through the audience, and then back up to the stage. Gradually, our director Matt Spangler noticed that with each rehearsal, the chase was growing more and more stale - there was no passion. He thought for a moment and came up with an idea. Matt suggested that the two of them make a bet before each show for a candy bar or a soda. If Amir was able to tag Hassan before the end of the chase, Amir would win the bet, but if Hassan could avoid him the whole time, Hassan would win the bet. That was all it took. Those actors wanted to win themselves a treat and the tag game was suddenly transformed into an epic battle of survival: prey and predator. All at once, the actors DEEPLY CARED about tagging and not getting tagged and every night it made their game extremely fun to watch.

Amir

07-08-07 | 07:39 pm

Howard the ghost

The techs on Kite Runner created an inside joke during the run of the show. The week before we opened, the cast began doing complete run-throughs of Kite Runner with lights and makeup. Sometimes a sound cue was missed or a lighting cue wasn't timed sharply enough, so we'd back up a few lines and do it again to make it perfect. Afterwards, the tech guys would talk about how active Howard was that night. No one working on the show was named Howard, so naturally I was confused. They explained that whenever a button wouldn't work or a spotlight swung a little too far, it was the doing of Howard the ghost. Supposedly, Howard is a mischievous spirit who has nothing better to do than fly around our theater space during shows and mess with our equipment, causing it to either not function properly, or not function at all. But it was funny how after a week of tech rehearsals, Howard decided he didn't want to play anymore.

Amir

06-29-07 | 10:32 pm

A letter from Khaled

About a month ago, I send an email to Khaled Hosseini asking if he was willing to help support this website by linking to it from his own website, khaledhosseini.com. Weeks passed, then out of the blue I received this message:

Dear Kyle: I am sorry for this delayed reply. I have been on the road, touring for my new novel, and am home now. I appreciate this e-mail and what you do. It's really pretty great. Thanks for caring. I will contact the website designer and have him set up a link and maybe include this story on the blog page. Thanks and my apologies for the delayed response. Take care, Khaled

My email hadn't been the first time Khaled had heard of Baba's Orphanage. After the closing night performance of the Kite Runner play, I'd showed him one of the Baba's Orphanage flyers.

Amir

06-23-07 | 12:51 pm

Edris on Kite Fighting

After the show closed, the actress who played Hassan was given an assignment in her photojournalism class to create a story on the topic of her choice. She chose kite fighting. Edris Amin was Kite Runner's kite fighting consultant. After calling up Edris, she was able to set up an interview time, and I tagged along to see what else Edris could teach me about kite fighting. We used a hand-held audio recorder to store Edris' answers to the interview questions, and later those files were moved to her computer. I took a copy of those audio files for myself and decided to create a fun little video by combining some of the things he said with random images I found online. If you want to be entertained for a couple of minutes, check it out on youtube:

Edris on Kite Fighting.

Amir

06-16-07 | 11:31 pm

Meet our Sound Designer

Scott Perry was responsible for both music and sound design for all of Kite Runner. He made sure that we had every sound effect, music track, and underscore that the director wanted for each scene in the play. He did an amazing job and I feel lucky that we had him as part of the Kite Runner team. This is Scott's bio, straight from the Kite Runner lobby:

"Scott Perry, a central Florida native, began his music career in northern California after moving to San Jose, CA in 1992. He received his B.A. in music performance in 2002 from Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina, graduating Magna Cum Laude with concentrations in music composition and guitar studies. Since 2002, Scott returned to San Jose and has finished the coursework for the degree of M.A. in music composition under the direction of Dr. Brian Belet and Dr. Paulo Furman at San Jose State University and is expected to be awarded the degree in 2007.

As an accomplished performer Scott has led a guitar quartet, sang jazz, classical, and rock vocals, played jazz bass, jazz guitar, rock guitar, Dixieland banjo, orchestral percussion, violoncello, lute,and his favorite, the classical guitar. This versatility is reflected in his compositions that range from works for chamber groups and orchestra, as well as for soloists, rock bands, jazz groups, percussion ensembles, and choir, among many others. In 2004, he received the Eva Thompson Phillips award for music composition. Most recently, Scott scored the independent film, So Beauty, in 2006, and his work, Matador, for string orchestra, was premiered by the San Jose Chamber Orchestra in January, 2007."

Amir

06-10-07 | 11:50 pm

Campus Advertising

During one of the Kite Runner fight rehearsals, our director came up and told me that there was a photographer in the back that needed to see me. When I got there, the photographer handed me a paperback copy of the Kite Runner and said he was going to take a publicity shot for the play. I took the book, tilted it slightly so as not to reflect the flash back at the camera, and constantly made small adjustments to my head position whenever he told me to. After thirty or so pictures of practically the same position, he stopped and said that that he was sure he'd taken a winner in there somewhere. He turned the camera around to show me the framing of the pictures and pointed to the areas where he said the text would be added. Weeks later, while walking to class, I passed Kite Runner's producer, Barnaby Dallas, in the hallway. He perked up and said that there was now a poster of me displayed at the entrance to Clark Hall. When I went to check it out, I found the poster the photographer had created (pictured below). One guy was walking past me, and when he noticed I was staring at myself, he started laughing.

Amir

06-04-07 | 04:58 pm

Creating the backdrop

One day, I walked into rehearsal to find the entire background for Kite Runner laid out backstage across the floor. Rita Foster, our scenic designer, was using the day to turn her scene concept into a reality. The backdrop was a light cream color and black was used to border the upstage entrance as well as the "cloud" shape. The idea behind the plain color was that different colored lights could be cast on the backdrop to denote changes of mood and location. The initial design you see here was actually modified later on. Because so much of the backdrop was of one color, when lights were directed towards it, the stage looked washed out and harsh. To help dull the effect, they dipped paintbrushes in black paint and swung the brushes towards the backdrop, flicking specks over the wide, empty areas. These additional spots absorbed enough of the light to make the stage easy on the eyes again.

Amir

05-29-07 | 08:06 pm

Rahim Khan's Website

Salman Khawaja played the role of Rahim Khan in our production of The Kite Runner. Whenever Salman wasn't on stage during rehearsals, he would sit off to the side and feverishly tap away on his laptop. It wasn't until later that we learned that he was programming educational games to work towards his Masters degree in Instructional Technology. I asked him if his games were online, and he told me they were! Check out his website at http://www.salmank.org/ and click on the "Development" tab on the top. You can choose one of five educational games he's created including a driving test simulator and a "Carmen Sandiego style" game.

Amir

05-22-07 | 08:25 pm

Hosseini's Second Book

Today is the day Khaled Hosseini's second book, "A Thousand Splendid Suns", hits shelves. I'm excited to read Khaled's latest work, and if the reviews on Amazon.com are any indication, then this is going to be another huge hit. I remember when Khaled was speaking at SJSU and someone asked him about his second novel. He'd mentioned that the story would have many more female characters this time around. It would be awesome if this story gets turned into a play like the last one, and I get another opportunity to perform Khaled's work on stage. In the meantime though, Hosseini is going to start touring with his new book. Here's wishing him continued success.

Amir

05-16-07 | 07:26 pm

Reading the Shahnameh

It the Kite Runner novel, Amir talks about how he used to read stories to his illiterate servant Hassan. For the play, we decided to represent that scene on stage. Hassan's favorite book is a tenth-century epic of ancient Persian heroes titled the "Shahnameh" (shaw-nuh-MAW). For the show, we were able to obtain a hand-illustrated copy of the Shahnameh translated into english. Hassan's favorite story in the book is of Rostam and Sohrab. The novel itself gives only a brief description of the story, summarizing that "the great warrior Rostam mortally wounds his nemesis Sohrab, only to discover that Sohrab, is his long lost son." But with the full text at our disposal, the actors were able to read the story from beginning to end and get a more complete understanding of why Kite Runner author Khaled Hosseini chose this story to be Hassan's favorite. Here's part of the Shahnameh where Rostam takes Sohrab's life.

Amir

05-11-07 | 09:30 pm

Meet Matt Spangler

Matt Spangler was the director of Kite Runner. He's a professor in the Communications department of SJSU and has a P.H.D. in adapting literature for the stage. When I first learned this, I asked him how many shows he'd adapted from books before he did Kite Runner. The answer: about 30. My favorite part of working with Matt was that he was always giving the actors notes. Notes, in theater, are performance suggestions made to the actors that the director feels will strengthen the show. During Kite Runner rehearsals we received tons of notes from Matt. I was glad that he was giving us so much direction, and even told him so during one of our breaks. When he heard this, he smiled, lowered his voice, cocked his head to one side and told me: "You know, usually when I have a new cast I'll give them notes and see what they do with it. If I give the same note once or twice and I don't see it on stage, I think "OK" and I ease up on the notes, but with you guys, I'll tell you to take a line out of a paragraph, and an hour later when we run the scene with that paragraph, poof! The line is gone. So I feel like "OK, I can give these guys a little more."" Working with Spangler was a fantastic experience and the show would not have been such a runaway hit without him.

Amir

05-06-07 | 12:40 pm

How to fight kites

The coolest part of doing this show was learning, in detail, the mechanics behind the Afghan tradition of kite fighting. During one of our rehearsals, Spangler brought in a seasoned kite fighting veteran to teach us the ropes. His name was Edris, and he had years of experience kite fighting. He'd even participated in his share of kite fighting tournaments. Our goal was to make it look like we were believably flying kites, when in reality, the kites would be mimed for the show.

Lesson #1: Stance. Always keep your knees bent because you might need to run in any direction at any moment and if you're not ready, you will lose. Point your dominant foot (if you're right-handed, your right foot and vice versa) toward the kite, and keep your other foot pointed out at a diagonal. Shift your weight back and forth between your feet constantly, almost as if you were rocking back and forth in place. You can't afford to be stiff if the situation calls for you to sprint down the road.

Lesson #2: Arms. As a kite fighter, keep your dominant hand in a fist and raise it up so that the nail of your thumb is about eye level. Cross your non-dominant hand across your chest to where the kite string would be - always prepared to quickly help feed more line or reel your kite back depending on the circumstances.

Lesson #3: Maneuvering. Kite control is very subtle and movements of the kite involve gripping the string with only the thumb, index finger, and middle fingers of your dominant hand. Slightly twitching your hand left or right was all that was required to keep your kite flying.

Lesson #4: Attacking. Since the way you would cut someone's kite in real life isn't all that interesting (a small jerk of the arm), Edris taught us a much more dramatic "stage cut". When you're making your cut, squat in place so your butt almost hits the floor, while simultaneously yanking your dominant hand from in front of your face, to over your shoulder. After the workshop I said I was eager to go outside and fly some real kites, and when Spangler heard this, he smiled and said he'd scheduled a special rehearsal just for that.

Amir

05-01-07 | 11:57 pm

The First Assef

During the initial readings of Kite Runner, the role of Assef was played by a guy named Paul. He had a healthy build and his skin tone made him a believable half-German, so seeing him in the role of Kite Runner's bully wasn't really a stretch. A couple weeks in, however, he began to confide that he wasn't looking forward to "becoming" Assef and believably presenting the persona of such an evil, hate-filled character. For him, the hardest part was the strong language. Paul's a nice guy, and he would never even THINK some of the words, that as Assef, he'd have to say comfortably with a smile on his face. It was too much. Days later he told Spangler that he didn't want to play Assef, but it didn't mean he wanted to stay out of the Kite Runner play. He proposed staying on the show as our Stage Manager and Spangler was more than happy to oblige. Paul's no stranger to Stage Management and he helped run a tight ship along with Spangler. This is Paul carefully analyzing the scenes on stage with the help of Kite Runner's Cultural Consultant Machelle.

Amir

04-27-07 | 11:59 pm

Stage Diorama

With the general concept for the Kite Runner stage determined, the reins were handed to our lead Scenic Designer, Rita Foster, to give the idea a physical form. It didn't take her long to come to rehearsal with a miniature of what our stage would look like. Our director was taking a minimalist approach to Kite Runner in terms of set and props, so one of the key decisions involved having a flexible backdrop that could be used for many different settings. A projector would cast images on this background to denote location and time of day changes. The giant gray pillars on either side of the stage would be used as covers for actors making entrances from either side. Early on it was determined that being offstage made it difficult to hear cues even if you were listening for them, so the pillars allowed actors to be on stage to clearly hear other actors and hit their entrances on time. The cloud area on the backdrop would be transparent for the scene where Amir and Hassan are in a tree. The idea was that Amir and Hassan would run backstage, climb up onto a box so their heads can be seen through the "cloud", then an image of a tree would be projected onto the backdrop to make it crystal clear that these boys were up in it. Pretty impressive.

Amir

04-24-07 | 11:34 pm

Tabla Drummer Salar

The left side of our stage was reserved specifically for the musician of our show: Salar Nadar. This musician, however, was unlike any I'd ever met before. He played an instrument known as the Tabla. I'll admit that I had no idea what a Tabla was before I started working on this show, and I learned that it was actually a kind of small hand drum. When Salar started coming to rehearsals to underscore our scenes, we were shocked at the variety of sounds he was able to produce from his drums. When an actor would run though the audience, Salar would create a quick pitter-patter of hits to emphasize the urgency, when fights broke out, strong strikes of the tabla accented the blows, and even something so subtle as a knock on an imaginary door garnered a shockingly realistic sound effect from Salar's gentle tapping. As a person, Salar was extremely kind. During shows he would come backstage and tell us about the scenes that the audience was reacting to strongly. Since Salar wasn't playing during every single moment of the show, there were periods where he could sit with his drums on his side of the stage and take note of how the audience was responding to the show. When the show closed, he even gave all the cast members a free copy of one of his CDs. It was a pleasure to work with him and I wish him continued success.

Amir

04-20-07 | 11:23 pm

The Blueprint

On the very first day of rehearsal, Spangler had us meet in a classroom. He wanted us to be familiar with the space that we'd have to work with for the show, so he took some chalk and sketched out a rough blueprint of the acting space we'd be using for Kite Runner. There were three entrance/exit points for us. Stage right, stage left, and upstage. There were also three extended platforms that reached into the audience, the left flank, right flank, and the center thrust. The first two rows of audience seating were removed to make room for the thrust and the idea behind it was not only to provide an in-your-face theater experience, but to also give the actors an added boost in vocal projection. The university theater as it stands has mediocre acoustics, but Spangler told us that when we spoke our lines on the thrust, the increase in volume made him think we were using microphones. From that moment on he would stress that most, if not all lines should be delivered while standing on the thrust. The two "ladders" he drew on the blackboard were the steps that connected the stage to the aisles of the audience. Spangler informed us that there would be scenes where actors would make use of those stairs and travel through the audience. The cast looked at each other with smiles on our faces when we heard this. We were all thinking the same word: "Awesome.". As actors, we had free reign over the stage in all but one place: the left flank. I'll explain why it was forbidden in the next entry, though you can get a pretty big hint by checking out the picture.

Amir

04-16-07 | 08:54 pm

Kite Runner Review

The play has been over for a month, but here's what our school newspaper, the Spartan Daily, had to say about it:

"Suspense washes over the stage as the story of a tortured man unfolds in the theatre adaptation of Khaled Hosseini's "The Kite Runner," a production exclusive to San Jose State University.

Audiences will be drawn to Amir, played by Kyle Swany, as he tells the tale of his childhood in Afghanistan.

He stands on the stage, bathed in light, and reminisces about the days when things were simple and he played with his friend Hassan. As he describes his youth, he is transported into a flashback as his memories race around him.

The actors playing young Amir and Hassan run up and down the aisles, bringing the audience into Amir's history.

Amir's story begins lighthearted, but soon the audience will realize that he is haunted by his past, and the true story of "The Kite Runner" takes place in the present.

Swany's portrayal of Amir is captivating. Despite his character's flaws, Swany convinces you to take this journey through Amir's memories and follow him into the future. By the time the lights fade for intermission, the idea of waiting 15 minutes to see the conclusion seems unbearable.

While Swany's Amir will touch your heart, Joshua Marx's portrayal of the bully Assef will chill you. As Assef stares out into the audience, you hope the gaze of a "sociopath" won't fall upon you because his icy glare has the potential to dissolve your soul before he has a chance to blink.

Marx's turn as the devil-child Assef is best illustrated in the alley scene, which is too shocking to describe. People who have read the book know this scene well, and even when you know what's coming, you are still terrified by the encounter that takes place between Hassan and Assef following a kite fight.

The cast of 11 actors takes on more than 30 roles, but the transitions go unnoticed. The actors are able to shift from cheerful Afghan children to heartless Taliban soldiers without causing any confusion.

These honest performances were very deserving of the standing ovation they received on opening night last Friday.

The play is full of action as well as tender moments, and there is even time for a laugh here and there. After the intense scenes prior to the intermission, a moment to giggle is greatly appreciated, and the re-enactment of the culture shock Amir faces when he comes to America does the trick.

The technical elements of the play are well done. The set is merely a large backdrop that changes with the help of colored lighting. The music sets the scene and helps transport the audience back and forth between Afghanistan and the United States. The costumes help bring the characters to life and the carefully selected props add emphasis when the imagination can only go so far. Director Matthew Spangler, an assistant professor of communications and performance studies, also wrote the script, and his adaptation does the story justice.

Hosseini's novel has flourishing details, and Spangler's cast brings the story to life with ease.

Fans of the book will notice missing scenes from the novel, but the key moments are all there. The only advantage of reading the book is that you will have a better understanding of the Afghan culture and the drama between the Pashtuns and the Hazaras, but the explanation in the play's program provides a good cheat sheet to bring everyone up to speed.

This performance is not for everyone. There are times when the story takes a violent turn and some of the scenes are disturbingly graphic, but the end result is worth the discomfort because this story of redemption will stay with you for many years to come."

This is a picture of the review pinned to the SJSU theater bulletin board.

Amir

04-13-07 | 02:17 pm

Meet Baba

We were lucky to have Chris G. as Kite Runner's Baba. He has a voice so deep and resonant that it commands attention and a personality that's impossible to ignore. He had the perfect presence and shined as an authority figure. It's ironic because Chris' height clocks in at about 5'8", not even close to the towering six-foot-five "Mr. Hurricane" as he's portrayed in the novel. But it didn't matter. Ask anyone who heard his thundering voice on stage and they'll tell you that there was no one that could have done the role better. This is Chris' bio and headshot:

"The Kite Runner marks Chris' third appearance in the University Theater. His previous onstage performances include 2005's Of Mice and Men (The Boss) and last year's Nickel and Dimed (Hector/Howard). He has recently appeared off campus at Northside Theatre Company as Adam in The Shape of Things by Neil LaBute, and with the Shady Shakespeare Theatre Company in their Summer 2006 productions of Romeo & Juliet (Friar Laurence) and The Taming of the Shrew (Vincentio). In addition to playing Baba, Chris also works as Fight Captain for Kite Runner. His other interests include pet sitting, collecting Chuck Palahniuk novels, and juggling (although he's still working on that last one)."

Amir

04-09-07 | 09:04 pm

Last piece of the Kite Runner Project

The final third of the Kite Runner Project has been upped to YouTube. The highlight is easily the dance-off that happens at about 5:00. Maybe the dance battle symbolizes Amir's struggle for acceptance in a new country, allowing him to forget about his past. Maybe it's a subtle nod to the conflict between the Shi'a and Sunni muslims, conveying the message that just because you're different, you aren't automatically inferior. Maybe the confrontation represents Amir's emotional rite of passage from a sinful childhood to a redeemed adulthood. Or maybe the students at CSUEB thought that dancing at each other would be a good way to kill a minute and a half. Whatever the reason, it's entertaining.

Watch the third 1/3 of the Kite Runner Project

Amir

04-06-07 | 10:48 pm

MySpace Deletion

I woke up this morning to find that the Baba's Orphanage MySpace page had been deleted. I guess that since the page was only created to get people interested in THIS site, their staff must have filed that practice under "SPAM", and pruned me. On the bright side, it forces me to think harder and more creatively in my search for the kind of people willing to support this goal. In the meantime, here's the second 1/3 of the Kite Runner Project. My favorite part of this whole show is in this second section and goes from 6:28 to 6:56. The guy looks totally possessed and if you turn up the volume, you can hear how hard he's breathing.

Watch the second 1/3 of the Kite Runner Project

Amir

04-04-07 | 11:36 pm

Assef?

Last weekend I learned that the contract for my cell phone had expired, so I dropped by a local Verizon store to see about getting a new one. I spent a few minutes giving my info to an employee behind a computer, but before he could enter it all into the database, one of his coworkers called for his help, so he turns to me and gestures to the employee next to him saying "Assef will finish up your order for you." I had to be hearing this wrong. "Who?" I asked, feigning innocence. "Assef." he repeated. I turned and looked in Assef's direction. He looked back. I had to ask. "Have you ever heard of The Kite Runner?" He cracked a small smile. "Yeah, Assef is the bad guy." Assef told me that he was born in Afghanistan in the city of Kabul. When I told him that I'd played Amir in the Kite Runner play at SJSU, he said: "You know when you walked in I thought to myself, 'He looks familiar.' What a small world." It turned out he was currently attending SJSU too and had seen my face on Kite Runner posters spread out around campus. We got to talking about the book and he said that the part about hanging out at the flea market was true to life. "When I first moved here, we'd go to the flea market all the time. My dad still goes to this day. He takes a few things to sell, but it's not even about that, it's the whole social aspect." He did have some criticisms about the novel though, particularly about the Sunni-Shi'a relationship. "I'm Sunni and I have very close family friends who are Shi'a. It really isn't that big of a deal." By now he'd finished updating my contract and I even got a new phone. Now I can tell people that Amir got his phone from Assef. Although I have to admit, thinking about that makes me kind of uneasy. I feel like one day I'll be trying to send a text message and a giant fist will shoot out of the screen and punch me in the face.

Amir

04-02-07 | 05:29 pm

First 1/3 of the KRP

I've uploaded the first ten minutes of the Kite Runner Project to YouTube. Here's a quick summary:

Cast speaks one at a time for 4 minutes about what Kite Runner meant to them.
Girl sings song from Wizard of Oz.
Everyone plays with kites on poles, sometimes shaking them violently at one another.

The best is yet to come - trust me.

Watch the first 1/3 of the Kite Runner Project

Amir

03-30-07 | 11:52 pm

Next Stop: YouTube

I've been playing with MySpace for a couple of weeks now, and I think it's time to start debuting some Kite Runner-related footage on YouTube. MySpace does have a video section, and the videos will get there eventually, but I've been eager to make a YouTube account for this site for some time now. My username over on YouTube is "KiteRunnersAmir". The first video I'd like to share is the introduction from CSUEB's "Kite Runner Project". The footage is only 3 minutes long but it lets you know what to expect during the 30 minute performance. I'll be uploading the rest of the KRP in several parts throughout the week. So that there's no confusion, CSUEB's production took place in Hayward and was completely independent of the official Kite Runner play at SJSU, so I won't be able to answer any questions about the production you may have. Check back soon to see the rest of "The Kite Runner Project".

Amir

03-27-07 | 10:53 pm

Struggling for Hassan

Lani, the girl who ended up playing the role of Hassan, was not handed her role on a silver platter. The role is written for a boy and our director would have been justified in casting a male for the part, but he didn't. So what made him decide to trust the role of Hassan to her? She was more dedicated in pursuing it than anyone else. Back in September 2006, when actors were being asked to participate in "Kite Runner readings" for the fall semester, she, like many of the people there, knew nothing about the novel or the story, but as soon as she got some material from the script to audition with, she fell in love with the language. She remembered watching the boys reading Amir's monologues and wanting to speak those beautiful words from her own lips. She asked to be able to read one of the Amir monologues. Spangler gave her the chance. In the weeks that followed, Spangler's homework for us was to read the book so that we could come into our first reading with a solid sense of the story and intelligently debate over which scenes in his draft of the script we felt were strong, and which needed to be replaced or cut entirely. It was during this time that she became drawn to Hassan. She had made up her mind to win that role. The auditions in September were only for the right to participate in the readings for that Fall. Auditioning for the play would happen next semester. When the time came, she stuffed her long hair under a baseball cap, wore a red basketball jersey with baggy pants and auditioned for Hassan dressed as a boy. It was after that audition that she made her final promise to Spangler - a promise to cut her hair so short that she would make a believable boy. Her hair had been long for all 22 years she'd been alive, but just like the real Hassan, she was no stranger to sacrifices. In the end, it worked. She won. From here on out she will always be able to say that she was the Kite Runner's original Hassan. Since I gave you a look at her "after" photo last time, it's only natural that I now show you a "before".

Amir

03-24-07 | 11:52 pm

Hassan's Secret

Before the callback portion of the casting for Kite Runner, it had already been decided that I would play Amir, so my role during the callback was to read the same scenes over and over with each auditioning "Assef", "Baba" and "Hassan". It was fun being on stage for the entire callback process, because I got to see everything the director was seeing. I'd watch the way actors would adapt to direction and I was trying to guess how the show would be cast based on everything I'd witnessed. Everyone at the callback knew who our Baba would be. Assef was a little tougher to pin down, but for the role of Hassan, there were only two candidates. Spangler later told me that his dilemma in casting Hassan was between "casting the actor who would fit the script, or casting the actor who was right for the role." The actor "who would fit the script" was a young, thin boy of Chinese descent who was also a high school student. The actor "that was right for role" was actually the actor that ended up getting Hassan, but our new Hassan had a secret that Matt was dedicated to keeping under wraps until Kite Runner was over. What was it? Our Hassan was played by a girl! Before the casting took place, she'd promised Matt that she would cut her hair (at the time, past shoulder length) short enough to become a believable boy. Ultimately he took her up on the offer. The secret of her gender was kept classified and she was intentionally left out of publicity photos. Her name in the program was even shortened to L. Wong so as to remain gender-neutral. The picture you see below was the same one that hung in the lobby with everyone else's picture to further mask the fact that "he" was really a "she".

Amir

03-22-07 | 11:49 pm

44 essays

Yesterday, after my final midterm of the semester, I made my way to Kathie's office. Last week she'd promised to let me read her class' Kite Runner essays once they were turned in. I found a seat in her office and she handed me a stack of 44 essays ranging from two to five pages each. I'd been looking forward to this all week, and almost two hours later, I'd read them all. The majority of essays discussed what they liked or didn't like about certain actors performances, and a few of them even delved into the meanings of color and costuming on different characters. For example, they'd talk about the colors a character was wearing and describe the character's personality traits and attitude that those colors were trying to convey. One of the papers was completely devoted to praising the performance of our "Hassan", but my favorite part of reading these essays by far was when I came across major mistakes. There were only a couple, but they were good. To be fair: if you haven't read the book or know the story these won't make sense. The first was: "When Assef first came onstage, walked all the way down to the audience and stood in a menacing pose, the audience knew immediately that he was the protagonist." The second is so priceless that I dare not reproduce it myself for fear of not doing it justice. So I took a picture of it.

Click the link below to read the greatest sentence ever written in a Kite Runner essay.

Amir

03-20-07 | 11:12 pm

My first hate mail

I've heard a lot things since I've started this project. Some have been skeptical, others have been excited, but everyone has been supportive. Until now. Today I got my first hate mail from a MySpace user regarding not only Baba's Orphanage, but Kite Runner in general. Here it is verbatim:

"The book is a pathetic piece of American brown nosing. I was disgusted with it and the author and you should be ashamed of yourselves. Calling the bully boys of the world (America-Israel-UK) the only real men of the world? You think oppressing people is being a real man? And what's with the Christian-America orphanage? What abut all the work Islamic Relief has done for the orphans? And what has America done to the country now? It has become a land where 8 year old girls are being sold as brides because there is no money. You all make me sick. It was a pile of shit."

You might be wondering, "What kind of person would say this about Kite Runner?" I know that that's what I was wondering. The answer? Someone who puts pictures of himself like this on MySpace:

Amir

03-18-07 | 06:37 pm

The flyer

Back in February, when I was originally telling Machelle, (Kite Runner's official cultural consultant), about Baba's Orphanage, the idea struck a chord in her and she felt that this was something that she had to support by being on the front lines. She wanted me to make a flier for her so she could take it to Kinko's and mass produce it. I was glad that she was so gung-ho about getting the website some publicity, so I spent that night putting together a flier that I emailed to her as soon as I finished. After seeing her the next day and making sure that she got the email OK, I didn't think much of it until opening night came around, and she hauled a large cardboard box into the makeup room that had a couple thousand blue fliers in it. She had me glance at them, and as I stood dumbfounded at the sheer volume of fliers she'd made for me, she said that before every performance she would go up and down the aisles passing them out to people in the rows before the show started. And that's what she did. I need more people like her on my side. This is a picture of the same flier that was handed out to everyone who attended the Kite Runner stage play. It's in thumbnail form, so you have to click it to blow it up and read the text. I'm sure you'll notice a striking resemblance to this web site's FAQ.

Amir

03-16-07 | 08:39 pm

Interpretive Dance

Kite Runner as an interpretive dance? I can't even begin to imagine what would take place. I won't have to imagine though, because my father was able to make it to CSUEB's Modern Dance event tonight and get it on film. I'll see if I can get the footage online so we'll all have a chance to form an opinion on what must certainly be a one-of-a-kind show. It's described as including :"dance, music, vocals and theatre", so we'll find out what that means sometime soon. The picture below is of one of their rehearsals. After using MySpace for the past five days, I've met a lot of supportive people and even a couple who are helping contribute to the orphanage! We're starting to break some ground and sell a few rooms. I have to admit that it feels pretty good to meet people who believe in your dreams and goals.

Amir

03-14-07 | 10:32 pm

Class Presentation

Last week, when Hosseini came to speak at SJSU, one of my teachers from last semester (pictured below)spotted me and asked me if I would talk to her Theater Appreciation class about Kite Runner. It sounded like fun, so I agreed on the condition that I would be able to eventually read the essays that the class would have to write about the show. She accepted, and at 12:45pm this afternoon, I stood before a class of roughly 50 students and talked about the entire production process including our early table readings in the fall, the cultural lessons that we learned along the way, and the workshops that helped us hone the skills necessary to make Kite Runner a smashing success. I'll go into detail on all of these facets seperately in future entries because it's too much info for one post. When I was done explaining a lot of the background work that went into Kite Runner, I did a little Q&A with the class. There were a lot of fun questions asked like "What's your favorite line in the play?" or "Which scene was the most powerful for you?", but there was one question that I'd never heard before, and which I thought was pretty cool. I was asked "When creating the play, what did you decide to focus the story on? What kind of story did you want the audience to take with them when they left?" Listen carefully, because if you ever have to write anything about the essence of Kite Runner, you can say you heard from Amir himself what the story boils down to, and it is these three words: Friendship, Betrayal, and Redemption. Before our director, Matt Spangler, began to write a draft of the Kite Runner script, the first question he asked himself was "What is this story about?" Those three words were his answer and they guided him to create a show that many are now calling the best show SJSU has ever performed on their stage. As soon as I get a hold of some of the papers that students are writing about the performance, I'll transcribe them here.

Amir

03-12-07 | 01:08 am

Baba's Orphanage on MySpace

On closing night, Hassan and I left the theater temproarily to drop off gifts and signed Kite Runner books in the car so we could hurry back and help clean up the set and join author Khaled Hosseini at the reception that was taking place a few doors down. As we were finishing dropping off all our swag, I heard a loud "excuse me" exclaimed in an unusually high tone. Our car was parked along the street, and a van had almost pulled up parallel to it. The sound came from a girl who had slid open the van's side door and was now staring straight at me. When I made eye contact, a chrous of giggles erupted from the van, including that girl, which made me believe I was dealing with a group of drunk and/or high students who were messing with me, so I ignored them. It wasn't until she actually stepped out of the van and handed me her Kite Runner book that I'd realized I was sorely mistaken. One by one students poured out of the van until Hassan and I were surrounded by about seven people. We signed several books and one program, and before they left, I told them that I'd be making a MySpace page for the Baba's Orphanage charity and they told me they'd check it out. Today I'm announcing that I've finished setting up that MySpace account and that you can show your support for Baba's Orphanage for free by adding me as a friend on the popular social networking site. The photo I used for the profile picture is one taken of me during the play as I described Baba's house in Act One.

Check out the Baba's Orphanage MySpace page

Amir

03-09-07 | 07:00 pm

Closing Night

Our final show of Kite Runner has been sold out for over a week. So many people attended that our intermission became 30 minutes instead of 15 due to the length of the lines at the bathroom. When all was said and done, not a single person remained in their seats during our bows. The show was followed by a Question and Answer session that included the cast, the director, and Khaled. I made sure to get it on tape, so look forward to seeing it on YouTube in due time. To be given the rights to even do this show before the movie release is incredible. As students, we were humbled by the opportunity we were given to participate in this once-in-a-lifetime experience. This show meant a lot to every cast member, and all of us felt it necessary to convey our appreciation accordingly. First, we bought two authentic Afghan kites, then we painted them to resemble the two most memorable kites in the novel: the blue kite that Hassan ran for Amir after the kite tournament, and the winning red kite that Amir and Hassan flew together during the tournament. When the Q&A session ended, we presented the red kite to our director Matthew Spangler, and the blue kite to Hosseini. We felt that Spangler should receive the winning kite for being a first-class, winning director during every Kite Runner rehearsal and performance, and it was only fitting that Khaled receive that blue kite - the symbol of Hassan's unconditional love - because without Khaled, none of this would exist. No book. No movie. No play. No website. For him, a thousand times over.

Amir

03-07-07 | 11:32 pm

Hosseini comes to campus!

Tonight at 7:30pm, Kite Runner author Khaled Hosseini came to the San Jose State University campus and spoke to a room filled to its 700+ person capacity. He started the evening off by giving us the answers to questions he is usually asked, including "Why didn't you chose writing as your career instead of medicine?". He also explained his history and the influences that led to writing "The Kite Runner". Afterwards, he read a passage from the novel and then answered questions from the audience. You might have noticed that I'm being pretty vague about all this - and it's because I've got it all on tape! It'll be on YouTube before you know it, and you'll learn about Khaled's writing process, and even the original ending to the story that his editor wouldn't let him keep! There was a table off to the side of the event that was selling copies of Kite Runner in both paperback and hardback. You could even purchase a pre-signed copy if you didn't want to wait in line. I took a picture of that table, as you can see below. Hosseini will be doing another talk tomorrow afternoon, and that night we're doing our final performance of Kite Runner to a completely sold out crowd, including Khaled himself.

Amir

03-05-07 | 04:29 pm

'Amir's Family' Day

March 3rd was the night that my friends and relatives came to the show! I typically only ever see them on Christmas, Thanksgiving, or Easter, so it felt good to see them in a place where we weren't just waiting for a meal and making small talk. One of the cooler compliments that evening came from my cousin Chris who said that he was so swept away by the characters and the story that he'd "forgotten he was watching his cousin up there". I also came across one of my best friends from elementary school, Kenny, who heard about the play and decided to surprise me by not telling anyone he was coming. See that "crack" on the backdrop in the background? If you follow it, it ends right on top of his smiling face. I also saw one of my old friends from high school, Jenna, who I'd taken to our Senior Prom. She's the one in the green Northeast of my head. We have only two shows remaining. Spangler once again saved us from doing a pick-up rehearsal, and instead requested that we come early on Tuesday to run some scenes before that night's performance.

Amir

03-03-07 | 04:53 pm

The Sixth Show

We performed our Friday show to a sold out audience! Two of my professors came to see it and made it a point to talk to me after the show. They had nothing but good things to say. Afterwards, I went into the lobby and met Atif's (Young Amir's) friends. All of them were sitting in the front row during the show. How could I tell? Well the show starts with me walking to center stage in the middle of a blackout. As the people in the front row heard me approaching, they were whispering "Atif? Hey Atif!" but when a spotlight finally faded up on my face and they saw that it WASN'T Atif, they let out disappointed moans. Later, I caught the sight of bright, colorful signs sitting in their laps. Clearly, they were eager to go nuts with them during Atif's bow at the end of the show. Hilariously, when Atif DID come out to do his bow, all his friends screamed, he looked at them with a huge smile... and that's all he did. Only when we were backstage after the show did he realize that he didn't bow at all! Once we'd changed out of costume, Atif introduced us to his fan club and I was able to snag this picture. Tonight is the night my family and friends will be making their appearance. I'm looking forward to it!

Amir

03-02-07 | 04:48 pm

The 'Young Amir' fan club

Our performance of Kite Runner has two Amirs. An older Amir who reminisces on his past, and a younger Amir who actually acts out those memories as they're described. Last Wednesday, (the day before we opened), Spangler took me, Young Amir, Hassan, and Assef to Evergreen Community college in San Jose in the middle of the day to perform a few scenes from the show for high school students. These students had read the book and were scheduling a field trip to the show. The entire event lasted about an hour. Spangler talked for a while on his process of condensing the novel into a two-hour performance that still did justice to the book, then we performed about five short scenes from the show, and finally all of us answered questions from the audience until our hour was up. But here's the best part: the guy playing the part of Young Amir is actually a senior in high school, and the class that we performed for that day was HIS high school class! Before the four of us were introduced to do our scenes, Spangler quickly asked the audience how many people in the audience knew our "Young Amir" personally. About 90% of the audience raised their hands. After our exhibition, Young Amir returned to school with his class. Later, at rehearsal, he told us that when he got back to school, everyone was so impressed with the presentation that they spent the rest of the class period talking about it. He also said that the class wrote journal entries on it! I asked him to collect as many as he could so that I could put them online and he said he'd try, then I asked when his class would be coming to the show and his answer was March 2nd. Today's that day, so after the show we'll get to meet Young Amir's fan club. This is a picture of Young Amir's class in the audience listening to Spangler talk about the book.

Amir

03-01-07 | 04:25 pm

Kite Runner x2

Yesterday's shows were incredible. Our Wednesday matinee crowd was the largest audience we've had so far. Two neighboring high schools, Notre Dame and Harker, brought so many students to that matinee that members of our stage crew were recruited to fetch extra fold-out chairs from a nearby room. That room was full of energy, and when emotional reactions were triggered - the response was powerful. When they laughed, it was so deafening you had to wait a few seconds for them to stop or else you couldn't be heard. When something was touching, a chorus of girly, soprano "awwwwww"s echoed around the theater. And if something was scary, you'd swear some kids out there were having asthma attacks what with the strength of their gasps. Overall, it was a fantastic show, and though we didn't get our third straight standing ovation, we could tell that they loved the show. Afterwards, Spangler joked that the audience was so enthralled with our performance, that if the schools had allowed their students to wait until we could come out in the lobby, that they'd be asking us to autograph their programs and take pictures with them. When the show was over, "Soraya" invited the cast to hang out at her place. When we got there, we all sat on couches, chairs and the floor and watched the Kevin Smith movie Dogma. At least three of us got so cozy that we ended up taking a little nap, myself included. A few hours later, we returned to perform our second show of the day. Thankfully, we were able to keep our energy high and the show strong because about half the audience gave us another standing ovation! After our bows, we went backstage, waited for some seats to get set up on the stage, then we came back out with our director and answered questions from the audience for about half an hour. My dad was able to record the Q&A session. Eventually, I'll watch it and write up a transcript for you guys. Tonight's show will be the fifth of nine. I can't wait!

Amir

02-27-07 | 08:21 pm

Kite Runner vouchers

If you've spent enough time at SJSU, you've learned that the school gives out a limited number of free tickets for every show. All you have to do is go to the Student Union, flash your student ID, and let them know which performance you'd like a ticket for. Not everyone knows this arcane fact, however, so whenever I talk to others about Kite Runner, I'm quick to ask them if they know how to get free tickets. Today, before class, someone asked me how Kite Runner was going so far. As I was telling him about our standing ovations, our teacher overheard us and asked me to talk a little bit about the show to the class. I quickly explained that we had huge houses the first two nights and that both of them were on their feet by the end. Then I told everyone that if they wanted to follow me after class, I'd take them to the spot where they give out free vouchers. When class ended, I lead four students to the office in the Student Union, only to watch the staff point to a flyer on their desk as soon as I mentioned Kite Runner. The flyer read in large bold print that there were NO more free vouchers for any of the Kite Runner performances. Apparently so many people were still asking for vouchers after they were gone that they printed fliers to shoo people away before they even came in. One of the ladies behind the desk noticed the shock on my face and explained that for a typical show on campus, people would come in on the day of a performance and ask for a voucher for that night, but since they've been out of Kite Runner vouchers for a while now, they're trying to let everyone know immediately so they don't have to explain that they're sold out over and over again. Ah well. I'd better get some rest. Tomorrow is our first and only double-show day! Also, after our evening performance, we're having our first of two Q&A sessions!

Amir

02-26-07 | 06:52 pm

Three days of rest

Today is day two in our three day hiatus from performing the show. It would have only been a two day break, but our director graciously decided to not have a pick-up rehearsal this Tuesday. In case you're not up to date on all your theater lingo, pick-up rehearsals are extra rehearsals that take place after the show has already opened. Typically, pick-up rehearsals are scheduled into the run of a show so that the cast doesn't get lazy with their lines or forget their cues. We're lucky that we don't have to have one, but there is one condition: Spangler told us to spend at least one hour of this break looking over the script so we're ready for the Wednesday matinee. It's a reasonable compromise if you ask me. Deep down, though, Spangler is looking out for us. Starting Wednesday, "Kite Runner" will have five performances in a row. Two shows on Wednesday (11am and 7pm), then one show each day on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. If we were to have done a pick-up rehearsal on Tuesday, it'd be the equivalent of doing SIX shows in a row, and the last thing Matt wants to do is exhaust us. In the meantime, I'm just glad to be at home drinking tea, trying to stay healthy. Of course, I'll be making it a point to find an hour later tonight to take a look at my script... that is... if my cat, Spaz, decides to let me.

Amir

02-25-07 | 05:28 pm

Four Afghan Sisters

After our second show, (and our second complete standing ovation) I changed out of costume, scrubbed my face with baby wipes to get all my makeup off, and headed straight to the lobby as usual to talk to anyone who'd stayed behind. As soon I got there, Machelle grabbed me and told me there were some people that wanted to meet me. Machelle is Kite Runner's "cultural consultant". Her role in our production includes making sure the actors are able to correctly pronounce people's names and the names of Afghan cities, in addition to teaching us proper customs like how to greet an elder, the proper way to dance, and the steps involved in a traditional prayer. As production on the show continued, she doubled as the play's dramaturg - aka the person who researches the history related to the show that's being performed. Where was I? Oh yeah, so Machelle comes over to me and tells me that there are some people that wanted to meet me. As it turned out, four Afghan sisters had attended that night's performance and Machelle had noticed that during the performance they were speaking Farsi to one another, so she went over and became their friends. Their names were Zahiera, Hosna, Asma, and Estorei. Apparently Zahiera's old manager is playing the part of Amir in the Kite Runner movie! She also says she's been given a few behind-the-scenes pictures from that movie. I told her to contact me through this website, but I now regret not getting her email or something. She said she has a myspace account though, so if you can find her, point her to this website! (She's the one on the far left.) The girls in the picture from left to right are Zahiera, Machelle, Hosna, Asma, and Estorei.

Amir

02-24-07 | 04:57 pm

100% Standing Ovation!

According to our producer Barnaby, SJSU hasn't had the entire audience give a standing ovation for about 5 years. It was amazing. I was so pumped after finishing that first show that I was ready to get back on stage and do it all over again. I didn't, of course, but I will on February 28th when we have an 11:00am matinee followed by a 7:00pm performance. I heard from others who had seen it, that at the end of last night's show, the director was grinning from ear to ear. And as if the overwhelmingly positive response to the show wasn't enough, I heard that people were talking to our director about taking the show to San Francisco after the run at San Jose State ends. Rumors are rumors though, so no one knows what will really happen. I'll leave you now with a picture of me preparing for the manliest portion of any stage production: makeup.

Amir

02-23-07 | 03:59 pm

Opening Night!

There's only a few more hours left until the opening performance of the Kite Runner stage play world premiere! Looks like I got this website up and running just in time. Was it really September '06 when the cast sat around a table for the first time to read through our scripts? I can't believe it's been half a year since this process started - and that's just for the cast! Our director, Matt Spangler, has been creating and reworking drafts of his script since 2005! The draft we're performing is somewhere between the 17th and the 20th. We're ready. After practicing for six days a week for four hours a day since January, the whole cast knows this show inside and out. We could do it blindfolded, hog-tied, or with any other crippling disadvantage that would make you think that continuing the show is no longer possible. The point is that this day has been a long time coming, and we're stoked. If you see tonight's show, e-mail me a review and I'll post it!

Amir