He's found escape in life and onstage
Kawa Ada polishes the stories he tells onstage, illuminating fragments of his native Afghanistan, which many Americans barely knew about three years ago but have since learned to fear.
An Afghan-born Canadian who was valedictorian of the Boston Conservatory's Class of 2004, Ada is appearing as Troilus in Shakespeare's "Troilus and Cressida," at the Publick Theatre through Sept 12. "I've also landed my first big job -- actually, it's my only job -- for the fall," Ada jokes.
Ada, 24, wrote, produced, and stars in "The Canny Afghani," a one-man play that opens Wednesday for five performances at the Boston Center for the Arts. Part family saga, part adventure tale, the performance piece is also a portrait of an Afghan artist as a young man told from a perspective that is passionate and comic, Ada says. And it is shot through with geopolitical observations and reflections that have preoccupied him since 9/11.
Like many actors, Ada fell in love with the theater in his early childhood. But unlike many fellow thespians, he performed his first role, at age 2, in a life-and-death drama: He and his mother, disguised as itinerant peasant farmers, fled from their home in Kabul, Afghanistan's capital. Mother and son traveled one route to escape a country that had been invaded by Soviet troops in 1979; Ada's father traversed another.
Ada and his mother (who was pregnant at the time) traveled by foot for three days to cross the border to freedom in Pakistan, where they waited for three weeks for Ada's father, who turned up only after he had managed to bribe his way out of Afghanistan.
Ada doesn't recall the details of the escape. But he sounds awed two decades later that he and his mother, middle-class urbanites who spoke Farsi, passed themselves off as Pashto-speaking peasants. "Saying anything in Farsi -- a slip of the tongue from my mother or me, a 2-year-old -- would've given us away" as impostors, Ada says. He has reconstructed that extraordinary episode, based on stories he's heard repeated and whispered by family and friends throughout the years. He recounts the escape along with a melange of childhood "images and large memories" of his family's subsequent journey from Pakistan to India, through Switzerland and, finally, to Toronto, where they settled in 1988.
Ada's extraordinary childhood and teen years in Toronto give shape and texture to his story. But it is his experience since Sept. 11, 2001 that inspired him to reconsider those old family stories, to ponder different perspectives, and finally to write and perform "The Canny Afghani."
"Until Sept. 11, I was someone with an Afghan face that no one recognized," Ada says. "People thought I was Pakistani, or Indian, or Arab. No one knew anything about Afghanistan.
"I hadn't been aware of the huge differences between the cultures I'd lived in -- or the plight of the people in Afghanistan. And I didn't know how people perceived me -- even people I considered friends. People on the street would give me certain looks. And I realized a lot of students were responding to me from a place of fear." Shortly thereafter, Ada began putting together informational forums on Afghanistan, the Middle East, and geopolitics. Some of what he learned is in "The Canny Afghani."
But worry not, he says. The piece is a performance, not a polemic. "In many ways, it's a typical American immigrant story," Ada says. His father, the scion of a wealthy Kabul family who was national chess champion for five consecutive years starting in 1975, "drove a BMW in Afghanistan," his son says. "In Toronto, he drives a cab."
"Both my parents have made enormous sacrifices for the future of their children," Ada says. Both are astonished their oldest son remains enthralled with singing, dancing, and storytelling. And even as Ada wins scholarships and accolades, he says, his mother and father wonder if they should worry.
Probably not, in the estimation of SpeakEasy Stage director Paul Daigneault, who teaches at Boston Conservatory and directed Ada in a student production of "Wonderful Town." "He's got a really promising future ahead of him," Daigneault says of Ada, whom he describes as an actor, singer, and dancer. "Kawa isn't just talented. He makes the most out of every role. He distills it. And he's got `it'-- whatever `it' is."
For tickets to "The Canny Afghani," contact the BCA Box Office at 617-426-2787, or visit www.TheaterMania.com. Maureen Dezell can be reached at dezell@globe.com.
