Award-winning playwright Henry Naylor in Pune with a story to make us reflect

Naylor is a three-time winner of the Fringe First, the highest award at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, the largest multidisciplinary festival in the world. He has been brought to India by Natrani and to Pune by Spotlight, in association with QTP Entertainment.

“After 9/11, the West needed to make a considered, rather than a hasty response, and all opinions should have been welcome. Fools and comedians are meant to be able to say the unsayable, to provide a perspective that challenges conventional wisdom. I think the knee-jerk anger displayed by Western governments after 9/11 needed challenging. We might have been able to add a useful, alternative perspective,” he says.

‘Afghanistan is Not Funny’ is based on a journey that Naylor and award-winning photographer Sam Maynard made to Afghanistan in 2002. The solo piece is performed by Naylor in front of Maynard’s photographs so that journalism meets autobiographical storytelling. “Before I went to Afghanistan, I was an ambitious comedian, who probably just wanted to become famous. After going to Kabul, I realised that my art and my satire might have a purpose beyond my own selfish ambition,” he explains.

The two chiefly went to Kabul, where Naylor remembers being adrenalised, as it was a perilous time. “The signs of conflict, violence, fear and human anger were everywhere. There was a lot of good there. Some of the aid workers we met were heroic. The courage shown by the Afghan people was extraordinary. I saw a 10-year-old boy who was learning to walk again after a land-mine injury. It was one of the most moving things I’d ever seen,” the playwright recalls.

In 2003, Naylor would write ‘Finding Bin Laden’, a satire with a gut-wrenching finale. ‘Afghanistan is Not Funny’ is a way to revisit this play and Naylor’s own experiences in the conflict-ridden country. “One of the most shocking moments was when we went round the Darul Aman Palace, a stunning ruin in the plains around Kabul. We went down a huge spiral staircase – and at the bottom there was a huge hole in the floor. The soldier showing us around explained that the week before, a member of the Taliban had planted a landmine there, intending to blow up foreign tourists. The landmine had blown up when he planted it, and his remains hadn’t wholly been cleared away… There was even a piece of his scalp on the floor,” he says.

In the show, Naylor uses an unusual style of storytelling. He addresses the audience directly, almost like a stand-up, but also uses drama skills. In addition to playing a distorted version of himself, he plays around 17 other characters.

The world has become even more dangerous since the start of this millennium, with conflicts spreading like wildfire. Israel and Palestine are caught in an uneasy truce while the war in Ukraine is entering another winter. “The violence on all sides is shocking. It is creating some ugly tensions across the world. There’s a dangerous and nasty upsurge of both anti-semitism and Islamophobia in the UK, both of which need to be crushed,” he says.

“Coming from London, a multicultural city, I have Russian, Ukrainian, Israeli and Palestinian friends, the majority of whom abhor what’s happening in their countries. It’s important to remember that the actions of political leaders are not necessarily supported by their respective peoples. It’s lazy and easy to ‘take sides’ and group people together under the stereotypical labels of nationality and race – and it’s unfair on the many dissenting voices,” says Naylor.