Nadia/Kabul/Barcelona

Nadia Ghulam grew up in Afghanistan. She was eight years old when the Taliban seized power in Kabul, her house was bombed and her brother killed. Although, due the severity of her injuries, the doctors gave her no chance of survival, survive she did – thanks to her mother who refused to believe the doctors and nursed her daughter back to health on her own. The Taliban regime had no place for women in public life. In order to feed her family, and later to learn reading, writing and arithmetic and to study, Nadia passed herself off as her brother. From that point on she played a role in life. When she was 22 she managed to escape to Barcelona. As a translator there she met the Catalonian theatre group La Conquesta del Pol Sud. In the production of »Nadia/Kabul/Barcelona« Nadia Ghulam plays herself on the stage and recounts her incredible story.

La Conquesta del Pol Sud, founded in 2009, is a theatre company from Barcelona, led by the director and author Carles Fernández Giua (*1973, Barcelona) and the set designer and video artist Eugenio Szwarcer (*1976, Buenos Aires). Their main focus is on contemporary plays and the search for new forms to transfer reality onto the stage. They won the III Premi Quim Masó for their production of the same title »La Conquesta del Pol Sud«. Further projects include e. g. »Contra la Democràcia« (Sala Beckett, Barcelona, 2011), »Variacions Kraepelin« (Sala Beckett, Barcelona, 2012) and »Si no ens paguen, no paguem!« (Teatre Tantarantana, Barcelona, 2013).

Making of