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[0:00] Alan Seales: Welcome back to The Theatre Podcast, intimate personal conversations with the industry's biggest names. I'm Alan Seales and this episode is the final, final episode of The Kite Runner Takeover here on the podcast. It's a throwback way back all the way to the weekend of July 8th, 2022 at BroadwayCon here in New York City. This is the live panel that I hosted right after The Kite Runner began previews and it's a panel with Eric Sirakian, Salar Nader, and Damian Sandys from the show. It's an extraordinary conversation that I'm proud to be able to share with you, which even includes a live tabla demonstration from Salar. And there's actual video footage that I took from the stage that I'll link to in the show notes for this episode.

You've got to check that out because it is absolutely incredible to listen to, but to watch it just adds this extra layer of holy crap, I didn't know people's fingers could move that fast. So you got to check that out. I also encourage you to visit BroadwayCon.com and subscribe to their newsletter so that once the 2023 details are announced, you will be the first to know. So as always, leave a rating, review, find me on social media and everybody please enjoy this special live episode with The Kite Runner. Here you go, one, two, three.

[1:26] Alan Seales: Hey everyone, how are you doing today? Welcome to day three of BroadwayCon. Yay, that's right. I'm Alan Seales. I am host of The Theatre Podcast with Alan Seales, that's me. And we are hosted on the Broadway Podcast Network. If you don't know what that is, just think Netflix for Broadway Podcasts and there you go. And here we are going to talk about The Kite Runner, which is one of the most anticipated shows of the next upcoming season. I saw it the other day. I saw first preview. It's been great. The audiences have been incredible and it is so powerful. If you're going to see it, bring your tissues, bring your emotions because you can't leave without acknowledging all of them. So a little bit about The Kite Runner.

It's one of the best loved and most highly acclaimed novels of our time. It's a powerful play of friendship that follows one man's journey to confront his past and find redemption. Afghanistan is a divided country and two childhood friends are about to be torn apart. And the story takes place at a beautiful afternoon in Kabul and skies are full of excitement and joy of a kite flying tournament, but neither of the boys can foresee the incident, which will change their lives forever. Told across two decades and two continents, The Kite Runner is an unforgettable journey of redemption and forgiveness and shows us that we can all be good again. A message that especially right now is something that is very, very important.

So to get the conversation started, please help me welcome Eric Sirakian, Salar Nader, and Damian Sandys. Welcome. There you go. All right. And so obviously we are going to get into a little musical demonstration later on. So I'm acknowledging the dead baby in the room here. There are props that we will use. So let's kick this off. And Damian, you're actually the associate director on the show and you've been with the show for how many incarnations now?

[3:38] Damian Sandys: So I've been with the show since 2017. I think this is my fifth or sixth iteration of cast along the way. And with me, I've done productions in the West End in London, across the UK, a production that went to Dubai. And now here we are on Broadway. And I guess for those in the room, an associate director, dive in a real quick touch on what your role is in the overall productions.

[4:05] Damian Sandys: So I kind of work hand in hand with our director, Giles Croft, doing a lot of the staging work and looking after the production as well. I started as the resident director in the West End. So once we had the production set up, the original creative moved on to other projects. I stayed with that and looked after all of our covers, the general running of the show, and then moving it from city to city every week as well. And this time around as associate, we've been looking at the general makeup of the production with the other creatives and finding occasionally new ways of telling this story here as well.

[4:53] Alan Seales: I have so many questions about that, but I want to talk to Eric real quick. Eric, you play both Hassan and Sohrab. So you play two of the characters, one in Act One and one in Act Two. And tell us a little bit about how your characters are connected. And then we'll get into actually the depth of these characters because holy cow, man, you got to go some places.

[5:17] Eric Sirakian: Well, I guess no spoilers. I don't know who's seen the show. I play Hassan, who is Amir's best friend in Act One. And Amir grows up and leaves Afghanistan. So he says goodbye to Hassan for various reasons, goes to America, comes back to Afghanistan in Act Two. And in Act Two, I play Sohrab, who is Hassan's son. Both of these characters are 11 years old, but they're a generation apart.

[5:51] Alan Seales: You are not 11 years old.

[5:54] Eric Sirakian: I am now eight times a week, 11 years old.

[5:59] Alan Seales: And then Salar, this guy here, we are in tabla artist royalty, by the way. Yes, you, sir. Hailed as Afghanistan's tabla virtuoso, Salar is a percussionist, composer, educator, producer, and this guy is the sought after tabla artist. So what is your role in the show?

[6:24] Salar Nader: Well, thank you, Alan. It's great to be here. Great to be at BroadwayCon. I think I might be the first Afghan male artist to be on Broadway. So that's pretty huge. My relationship goes back pretty far with the author, Khalid Hosseini, the author of the actual book. I performed at his private engagement party. And 15 years later, when I approached him at his book signing, I said, can you sign my book? He's like, Salar, what the hell? You're here? He's like, I know you. And I said, well, look, if you have an adaptation, film, stage play, please don't forget me when it comes to the music. So when Matthew Spangler began his workshop in 2007, we sat down and worked in the music and percussion parts and whatnot. So it's what, 15 years that I've been a part of this, and then had a short little break from 2013, and now I get to reunite with my brothers up here and do it all over again.

[7:30] Alan Seales: So you composed all of the music directly with the creative team for the play, or how did the actual composition and the creation of the music come about?

[7:40] Salar Nader: So seven productions, Louisville, Arizona, the world premiere in San Jose, I did compose, and then also I helped with cultural consulting as well. I was like dancing, playing tabla, doing it all. And I've met with John Gerling now, who's our music director and composer. And so he and I have sat down and we've done new arrangements for this iteration. So it's been an evolution of sorts. And what's been beautiful about this process is everyone's been so welcoming with new ideas on and off stage. And as you see this big drum here, the Ahtan, the national Afghan dance is something that has never been showcased on stage. And I shared it with both Giles and John back in March during a Nowruz festival at the Getty. And they were like, we have to do this during the wedding. So anyways, you'll get to see the spinning dance. And the guys do an amazing job.

[8:40] Damian Sandys: It's incredible the way that the music, I mean, you sit downstage off to one side or the other, depending on what act we're in, and you're part of the set. And I think the final piece of the scenery, if I may say that, because you blend in and add that final polish and that final touch to a whole atmosphere that is created.

[9:01] Damian Sandys: I think it's very much like the underscore of a film, almost, because the music is there underpinning everything. It complements the action. It drives it on at various points. And you hear the different tones coming through in that. So sometimes it signifies the mood change before the actors have got there just to set off little alarm bells in the audience's head or so on. And it's a brilliant way of switching moods, location as well, in an almost effortless way to the eye with this man here doing all the work.

[9:45] Salar Nader: Thank you so much. I want to add a little bit to that. Being an Afghan on stage and listening to all these different moments in Act One, I'm not going to ruin it for you all, I'm also absorbing and feeling every emotion between the audience and the story that's being told on stage. So at least ten times a night I'm crying, and luckily I'm under low light, so I'm like, okay, squeeze out another tear, and then look this way, and then I have my wiping moment. So it's a very unique position I have between both groups.

[10:26] Alan Seales: That's interesting. You're like, yeah, you're sort of the bridge between, as the underscoring, like you were saying, Damian, that, yeah, you're the bridge between the audience and the mood and all of the set, the actors and everything. And so you have to feel that. I didn't realize that you were so...

[10:42] Salar Nader: Yeah, you can't just shut that button off.

[10:44] Alan Seales: That's incredible. I guess there's also the other instruments. There's more instruments on stage, which I've never seen any of them. What's this thing called that creates the wind?

[10:56] Salar Nader: The shwerbogan.

[10:57] Alan Seales: What?

[10:58] Salar Nader: The shwerbogan.

[10:59] Alan Seales: Shwerbogan?

[11:00] Salar Nader: Yes, and it's a piece of wood with an elastic band on it, it's very simple, and it cuts through the air to create the most unusual, unique sound. And the majority of our cast play those during the show, particularly during the kite tournament. And the rush of wind that you get through that is incredible.

[11:25] Alan Seales: For those of you who haven't seen it, this is one of my favorite things, the first time that came out. And then I was like, oh, what's that? Okay, there's one of them. And then, now there's, what, ten or something? Everybody's got one at the end. And so you're building, like the underscoring we were talking about, you just build this momentum, and you're building this feeling, and you can hear it through the whole house. You feel like you're in the middle of a wide open field, with the kites flying all around, and with the set and everything else, it's just beautiful.

[11:57] Alan Seales: Switching gears a second, Eric, how much did you know about the story before taking on these roles? Did you read the book first?

[12:05] Eric Sirakian: Yes, I read the book. It came out around the time I was actually the age of Hassan and Sohrab, the characters I'm playing. So I read it then, a long time ago. It was hugely impactful. It meant a lot to me, and to my family at the time, as it did, I think, to all immigrant families, and to, I mean, to everybody. It was such an important book. I re-read it, of course, before my audition, re-read it before we started rehearsals, and it's a very rich book. I think you get a lot out of it each time you come back to it, which is why I think for anyone who's read the book and contemplating seeing the show, I think it's a story you can experience many times and find new connections with.

[12:57] Alan Seales: I want to say, too, that all three of these men here are making their Broadway debuts, so congratulations. And Damian, you said, too, that, what, 17 or so of the 19 cast members are making their debuts at this show.

[13:14] Damian Sandys: Incredible! And, yes, yes, please. And I love one of the other cast members who plays Soraya, Azita, Azita Ghanizada, she's the first Afghan woman to make her Broadway debut, and she actually has a wonderful TED Talk that, you should Google this and just search for Azita's TED Talk, but she's talking about the journey she went on as a woman of Afghan descent to create the representation that was lacking in TV and theater and movies.

[13:51] Alan Seales: So this is, I want to acknowledge that this is an incredible, incredible time when we have so many people that are not your traditional heritage making their Broadway debuts, but we've got so much farther to go and we can do better, right? So for all of you experiencing this personally, like, what does it mean for you to make a Broadway debut as a tabla percussionist?

[14:15] Salar Nader: Right, right. Well, before being a tabla percussionist, I'm also born Afghan descent, right? So to watch Azita perform and work her mastery on stage, we have to remember that as of August 15th, this last summer, girls' schools, women's schools, women's schools, women's schools,

[14:39] Alan Seales: Broadway Podcast Network with Salar Nader, Eric Sirakian and Damian Sandys from The Kite Runner.

[15:09] Eric Sirakian: I'm in California. Let's see what lands on my lap. And of course, the kite landed. And I said, this is the best way to represent the music, the arts, the cultural authenticity of Afghanistan. And so this hits home. I have my dad has nine brothers and six sisters who never made it out of Afghanistan. So I have about one hundred and twenty three first cousins. So when I've gone back to Kabul, my grandfather, who passed, was introducing me to each one. And he's like, Abdullah, Khalid, Mohammed. I was like, just stop right there. I'm going to forget everybody's name. So and they're all back home. So and they're actually watching all my stories, every post I do from this show. They're hearting it, liking it. And they know that there's someone here representing. And I will do that until my last breath.

[16:06] Damian Sandys: And you your family actually went through the very, very similar situation. Your father. Right. We had to leave Afghanistan. So my mom's side were direct descendants of the Zahir Shah line of royalty in Afghanistan. And so our family was literally being hunted down by the Russian invasion and occupation of Afghanistan. And so my part of my mom's family was smuggled out through Pakistan. So the tanker scene of Russia didn't want to ruin this, but there's a scene that each night I'm sitting watching on stage and I'm like, well, that's my aunt. That's my cousin. And my father made it out on a flight to West Germany at the time, 1979. And I was born in 1981, around the same time Amir and his father fled. So this hits home in so many ways.

[17:09] Alan Seales: Wow. Yeah. Damian, what about you making making your debut?

[17:26] Damian Sandys: It's all very surreal, really. There's been so many moments where it's just it is. Is this a long extended dream that I am going to wake up from at some point? In one sense, there's so many similarities between putting a production on anywhere, but there is an added magic about it being here. And I think it was that first night that we walked out of the theater at 10:30 onto the street and there's the lights of everything just there. And I was like, wow, this feels this feels incredibly special. And particularly, I think that there are so many people on the production, both in the cast, our technical departments, in the creatives, all making their debuts. It feels an enormously special production and a huge privilege to be part of with everyone making that step together.

[18:02] Alan Seales: Wow. And Eric, your experience too, is it similar?

[18:32] Eric Sirakian: It seemed like a very distant and impossible dream. And to be here, it seems surreal. As you said, it's special on the level of just how personal and close this story is to me and my family's experience, the experience of leaving home. Amir's story in the play is so close to what my mom experienced in terms of leaving her home in a time of political upheaval. And it's special because of how much I've grown to love and care for this country, Afghanistan and its people and its culture through the friends I've made in this cast, through the friends I've made in London and New York, the Afghan friends who have taught me about it, the friends I've made in Kabul over the last few months. And doing this play now at a time when those people, it feels like in a lot of ways we're tired of hearing about Afghanistan.

It's yesterday's news. There's a lot of other things taking up our time and attention, which that's how it goes. But actually, Salar has touched on this. There are a lot of things we should know and care about in terms of, especially given our country's involvement with Afghanistan over the last 20 years. So to tell this story, which I think celebrates the resilience and the hope and the culture and the humanity and the beauty of those people, a lot of whom we've left behind, feels really important and special.

[20:19] Alan Seales: You mentioned, yes, you mentioned now that we're seeing, unfortunately, a lot of similarities today as we were 20 years ago when the book was first written.

[20:35] Eric Sirakian: And the book, I guess the story itself also, and we're talking about a lot of the negative things, or not negative, but like the sad parts, but it's cathartic. It's a very cathartic story that, I mean, it's about friendship and family and redemption and overcoming guilt. And I guess, Damian, I want to start with you. When you're approaching putting such an amazing book with so many levels and so much depth, like you start peeling back the layers of the onion of this book, where does it even begin to get condensed down into a slightly longer-than-two-hour stage adaptation?

[21:23] Damian Sandys: I think you always have to be conscious of what is the story you're telling. And a book always has the ability to contain millions and millions of tiny little details. And you want to carry as much of that over to the presentation of the play as possible, because it's a very loved piece. But at the same time, you've got to be really critical of it to make sure that everything serves the purpose in the play and that it's constantly moving the story forwards, rather than getting stuck in any one particular part of it. And I think the words you were just saying is what underpins the whole thing. Whilst this story has such a specific context rooted in a very important culture, at the heart of it, it is a story of very basic human emotions of love, friendship, betrayal, forgiveness, redemption.

And that's why I think the story is so relatable to anyone and has a timeless appeal to it, almost, in the way that Shakespeare plays work, in the same way. Whilst there is that really specific location, incident that happened, the nature of it speaks to everyone. And I think that is why so many people carry it in their hearts. And translating the story to the stage, you have to constantly keep that thread of story in your mind and making sure that that's what's coming through at every point.

[23:06] Alan Seales: Salar, were you part of crafting, I guess, the condensed version? Because when we think about a whole story, it is music, it is atmosphere, it is scenery and lights. I think smell and music are the two things most tied to memory. And obviously we don't have Smell-O-Vision in Broadway yet, but take note, make it happen, somebody out there. And the music side of things, I think, when you were approaching how to craft this, how to compose this, were you going back and taking moment by moment, were you working with past collaborators or did you go into a dark room and come out and be like, here you go?

[23:58] Salar Nader: Well, that's a big question.

[24:00] Alan Seales: We've got time.

[24:01] Salar Nader: Yeah. I should mention that my training, my formal training has been with the celebrated Grammy award winning master, Zakir Hussain, who we call Ustad Zakir Hussain, for those of you who are fusion music fans. He formed the group Shakti with John McLaughlin. And so it's an oral tradition, meaning everything you play on the instrument can be recited. So that's a kite taking off into the sky. So that is played on the instrument. And so studying with him was a huge blessing because we play with a style of music called Kathak dance. I'm sure you've seen the amazing Bollywood films and Indian films that have the dance and the percussion that go together with them. And what we do is the dancer is telling a story.

So in this case, the actors on stage become my dancers and I'm underscoring all of their emotions, movements, temperaments. And sitting down with Matthew, we went through about maybe 300 pages at first. What do you think about this section? What do you think about that section? And we started writing in potential cues. And again, this was about 15 years ago. So having that backing in the oral tradition of tabla language made it quite easy to approach the play. So watching movement, watching young Amir and Hassan run across stage, run up to the pomegranate tree. Of course, you have different types of rhythms that can underscore that. And what I did particularly was how can I feature the rhythms that tie in to the tribes that these actors represent because they're from different tribes. Pashtun has its own sound and rhythm and melody. Hazarajat and Hazaras have their own sound and melody. How can I marry the two and introduce the sound? And that was the goal.

[26:17] Alan Seales: Was it a lot of experimentation? You were saying you were doing this 15 years ago and then bringing in the cast is almost the last part every single time. So Eric, when you come in and you're given, okay, here's the script, you have to start going through blocking. And I guess speak to the process of how you helped put it on its feet for this production, integrating all of the choreography, the lights, the music, and then the set is just something I've never seen before. It's incredible.

[26:51] Eric Sirakian: Well, it's a very well-oiled machine. Damien has done this show about a million times and it's very precise. And I think the precision is part of what makes it work. So we did a lot of drilling from the very first day to make certain things like the kite tournament, certain sequences really, really sharp and precise. And then within that very tight structure, we have room to breathe and play and grow into our roles. So it was a quick process. It was a very on-our-feet-from-day-one process. Music came in about halfway through and that was a whole new – I mean, what Salar does is incredible. Sometimes it feels like no acting required because the music carries us so far through the journey of the story.

It was a layering process. So I say music came in late. We started with really basic things of movement and choreography and added layer upon layer of what's going on. So it's incredible how well Damien knows this. It's kind of scary, the show. It's all in his head and he communicated it to us beautifully.

[28:12] Alan Seales: So Damien has agreed to recite the entire play for us.

[28:16] Eric Sirakian: No, I'm kidding.

[28:18] Damian Sandys: He definitely could do that.

[28:20] Alan Seales: Eric, what did you learn about yourself, Eric, when you're starting to embody these two characters, going through the rehearsal process? Did you take anything out of this and take it home with you? I mean, because there's some pretty severe things that happen.

[28:37] Eric Sirakian: Yeah, I won't necessarily talk about the severe things only because I don't know who's seen it and who might not want to know yet. The thing about, I guess, a really, really rich story or a really rich book, a really rich script, it does connect to you on so many levels. And I think it's taught me a lot about what I really care about, what's really important to me. Friendship, first of all. It's a story that at its core celebrates a really beautiful friendship, really close, beautiful friendship between two people. I've learned through doing that.

[29:19] Salar Nader: And Damian Sandys from The Kite Runner.

[29:49] Salar Nader: So, we don't play traditionally as respect to the stage and our instrument. We always remove our shoes before we approach the instrument. And I think what I'd like to do is before I play the tabla, I want to integrate the audience into an Atan dance. So I'm going to play this drum, which is called the Atan dhol. And I'm going to show you a very simple move. I know it's early in the morning, but let's get that blood flowing. You can all rise slowly, please join me on this. And I'm going to give you a downbeat and how to clap to this.

[30:19] Salar Nader: Do you mind holding this?

[30:49] Salar Nader: So very simple. The rhythm I'm going to play is like this. Clap. Wave. Clap. Wave. Clap. Wave. Clap. Wave. Keep that going while I put the drum on.

[31:19] Salar Nader: There you go. There you go. There you go. There you go. There you go. There you go. Clap. Ah. There you go. Now if you want, you can do a circle. It's a clap. There you go. There you go. There you go. That's it. So that was your first Ahtan. Yay. Thank you so much. Normally that happens at the end of a wedding.

[31:49] Salar Nader: So the tabla, as I mentioned, has its own language. Each stroke that is played has a corresponding finger assignment, like the piano. And so the technique it's played with is also more piano. Can you see over this speaker over here? Should I move back a little? Can everybody see? Okay, great. And I think I have a track.

[32:19] Salar Nader: You don't have to play the track yet. But I'm just going to give you the strokes real quick, and then I'm going to play them. So da. Da. Tin. Teta. Da, ge, ge. Da, ge, teta, kita. Kita, taka, tera, kita. Da, da, kita, taka. Da, taka, tata. Ta, taka, tera, ta. Ta, taka, tata, taka. Da, taka, tata, taka. Ta, taka, tata, taka. Da, taka, tata, taka. Da, taka, tata, taka. Da, taka, tata, taka.

[32:54] Salar Nader: So, this rhythm is something I play the first moment when the kids are playing on stage, young Amir and young Hassan.

[43:59] Salar Nader: Okay. Now, the tabla tradition is a 400-year-old tradition. And so we have fixed compositions we play in solo recitals. Solo recitals can last two hours long. Just tabla information. But I also mixed the tabla into hip hop, jazz, country music, classical, you name it. So there's a track up here that I'm going to play with for a minute and a half and you can get a little taste of that as well. The track, please.

[45:06] ♪ Musical number ♪

[58:35] Salar Nader, Eric Sirakian, Damian Sandys: