By Carrie Lee
Washington File Staff Writer

Washington -- On October 9, Afghan citizens will vote in the country's first national election for president. But in a country where only 28 percent of the population has access to television and 20 percent has access to newspapers, how can the public, many voting for the first time, learn about the election process?

The Mobile Theater Project, a civic outreach initiative that uses live theater to raise public awareness on the importance of elections and voting, formed to fill that role. Two Afghan civil society groups -- the Foundation for Culture and Civil Society and Sayara -- spearheaded the project with funding from the U.S. Agency for International Development through the Asia Foundation.

With nearly 400 performances and a total audience of 430,000, the Mobile Theater Project enjoyed a successful run from June to August. The public reaction was so positive that the project staged three times as many performances as originally planned, according to Nellika Little, a civic education consultant with the Asia Foundation in Kabul.

By drawing on familiar folklore characters from the Afghan oral tradition, the plays offered an easily accessible means to spread the elections-awareness message, said Little. The star of the show is the "Mullah Nasrudeen" character, a well-known jokester from Afghan parables. The 45-minute play follows respected village teacher Sharif Khan and his family as they learn the rules and procedures of the election process from an onstage civic educator while the Mullah's witticisms illustrate the play's message. Actors in the audience call out questions, making the play an interactive experience.

The theater teams toured the show throughout Afghanistan, performing the plays in over 17 provinces. To complement the onstage message, the teams distributed elections-related stickers, posters, and summaries of the script in comic book form to the crowds. Whenever possible, the performances coordinated with the travel of the U.N. voter registration teams, so that interested spectators could register to vote immediately.

The project also sponsored a nationwide competition for high school and college students to write their own plays on elections awareness. The nine winning teams, including one all-female group, also performed their 15-minute plays throughout the country.

The role of women in elections played a central part in the project's effort, as civic educators sought to reach out to women who had been barred from public life during the Taliban regime and still face many obstacles to full social and political engagement. However, women's participation in the plays and in the audiences varied widely from district to district. Because of local sensitivities, said Little, male actors performed the women's parts in the plays in some districts, while females performed onstage alongside males in other districts. Female spectators usually did not sit in the general audience, but watched from the sides or at a distance.

Nevertheless, women's participation in elections remained a featured aspect in the standard script for all performances. In the play, the mother/wife character, considering running for parliament, speaks with eloquence on the country's needs such as schools and electricity. The onstage civic educator also states that voting facilities for men and women are separate, so that women may vote without a mahram (male escort).

As the attendance figures available on Sayara's Web site suggest, the plays were a tremendous success. The show has ended its three-month run, but its significance is ongoing. This year's Mobile Theater Project is just the beginning of a growing effort to combine public outreach and local art forms. The impact of the project is twofold, said Little. While the short-term goal is to support voter registration for the fall elections, the long-term impact focuses on the revival of local artists and grassroots activism as a means for civic education. Through its use of local performers, the project also sought to build positive public opinion toward the elections and to revitalize Afghan theater, which had suffered under Taliban persecution.

The success of this year's project likely will make the theater-outreach method an attractive model for future civic education initiatives, both within and outside Afghanistan. Little said that the model could also extend to include other public education topics such as health or agriculture. The Mobile Theater Project "worked so well as far as people's reactions to it that I would definitely want to see it happen more here," said Little.