Adapting for ‘The Kite Runner’: A fidelity project to reimagine an Afghan aura

This chapter analyses a theatre performance of The Kite Runner performed at the Birmingham Repertory Theatre in 2014. Borrowing Walter Benjamin’s concept of ‘aura’ interpreted as a way of ‘getting closer to things’, I propose that Matthew Spangler’s adaptation of Khaled Hosseini’s novel establishes a ‘genuineness’ to an Afghan culture. In Spangler’s attempt to avoid being culturally offensive, his stage adaptation remained ‘truthful’ to the novel, a form of fidelity to the source. I further suggest that fidelity is, perhaps, one American adaptor’s way for America, in the novel’s words, to be ‘good again’ to Afghanistan.

Citation:
Chow, Edmund. “Adapting for ‘The Kite Runner’: A fidelity project to reimagine an Afghan aura.” Contemporary Approaches to Adaptation in Theatre, edited by Kara Reilly, Palgrave Macmillan, 2017, pp. 161-74.