IT may be the pleasure of politicians on both sides of the fence to ignore the arts most of the time but it when it comes to the world’s really significant crises, they’re usually to the forefront.

It’s not surprising, therefore, to learn that the organisation Critical Stages Touring, director Chris Bendall and a group of actors have got together to present two 100-minute livestreamed reading/performances of a play that deals with the crisis in Afghanistan.

The performers will be connected from their homes in three cities, raising funds to support the NY/Kabul-based Women for Afghan Women and Australia-based Mahboba’s Promise.

Fear not, it isn’t one of those pieces hastily whipped up to cash in on the recent withdrawal from the war-torn country.

The play “Homebody/Kabul” is by Tony Kushner, the legendary America American playwright Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1993 for his blockbuster play “Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes”, which was his reading of the HIV-AIDS crisis.

Kushner didn’t whip this play up yesterday. He wrote “Homebody/Kabul” in 1998, well before 9/11, although it feels prescient now and had a successful Melbourne production in 2007, also directed by Bendall.

I’m talking by phone to Osamah Sami, the writer, director and actor who wrote and starred in feature film “Ali’s Wedding” and the stage play “A Good Muslim Boy.”

Osamah was also in that 2007 production of “Homebody/Kabul” and, to his own wicked delight, got to play Mullah Durrani, a narrowminded Taliban official from the Afghan Pashtun majority.

The deliciousness of this comes from the fact that Sami‘s real-life father was a respected Melbourne Shia cleric, but as anybody who’s seen “Ali’s Wedding” knows, a rather eccentric one who loved to write plays.

“I play a character rather like my father’s nemesis in ‘Ali’s Wedding’,” Osamah tells me. By coincide the actor who played him, Majid Shokor, is in “Homebody/Kabul” too.

Briefly, he explains, in “Homebody/Kabul,” a London housewife — the “homebody” of the title — reads a outdated guidebook on Kabul, goes there to find the grave of Cain, then mysteriously disappears. The play shows how her husband and daughter searching for her in Afghanistan and the contradictions that ensue.

Osamah is quick to reject the suggestion that Kushner was imposing a white person’s narrative on a tragic situation, praising his script.

“I feel it gives the audience an access point to a world which is forbidden. All the characters are so well written and so well fleshed out that you become immersed in the work,” he says, “like the hatseller, a beautiful human being and a poet.”

“And though some of the characters can be quite brutal, that doesn’t mean take away from their reality.”

He has a  point. For even within the play, there are humane mullahs and anyway, as Osamah says, “one person’s terrorist is someone else’s resistance fighter.”

“The play is moving but also has a lot of humour,” he says, “and there’s an element of hope, although it doesn’t show away from reality.”

“When you go to the theatre you want to feel slightly unsettled, unnerved, you’re not in a fancy restaurant.”

Kushner doesn’t obey the conventional playwriting rules and begins with the Homebody, played by Caroline Brazier, reading the tourist guide book in a 14-to-15-minute monologue – “thrilling,” Osamah says.

The thing that he loves most about the play is how colourful the characters are —”Afghans who are very different from one another… a myriad of characters all depicted in different ways.”

Some of the best-known cast members are Geraldine Hakewill, Tyler Coppin and Simon Burke, who is  taking time off preparations for the premiere of “Moulin Rouge.”

Wahibe Moussa will reprise the role of Mahala, for which she won the Green Room Award for Best Female Actor for her performance in the 2007 production.

She’s just one of the impressive line-up of actors in Australia of Middle Eastern background, including Osamah himself, Mansoor Noor, Reza Momenzada, and the award-winning Majid Shokor.

“There’s a shift in attitude,” Osamah says, “there are now many good Muslim actors breaking ground.”

Tony Kushner’s “HOMEBODY/KABUL,” 7.30pm, Friday and Saturday, October 1 and 2. Free but donations are encouraged and registrations are essential to here.

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