Khaled Hosseini's first and international best-selling novel, The Kite Runner, has been adapted into a stunning stage adaptation by Matthew Spangler.
Khaled Hosseini was born in Kabul, Afghanistan and moved to the United States in 1980. His novels The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns were international bestsellers, published in thirty-four countries. In 2006 he was named a US goodwill envoy to the United Nations Refugee Agency. He lives in northern California. Matthew Spangler is a playwright, director, and professor of Performance Studies based in the San Francisco Bay Area. His adaptation of Khaled Hosseini’s novel The Kite Runner received five San Francisco Bay Area Theatre Critics’ Circle Awards including Best Original Script. His other plays include Tortilla Curtain, adapted from the novel by T.C. Boyle, which received an Edgerton Foundation New American Play Award, as well as being a finalist for the San Diego Theatre Critics’ Circle Award for Best New Play; Albatross based on the poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, which received Boston’s Elliot Norton Theatre Awards for Outstanding Production by a Small Theatre and Outstanding Solo Performance. Other works include one-person shows of James Joyce’s Dubliners and Finnegans Wake; A Paradise It Seems, an adaptation of John Cheever’s short stories; Mozart!, a musical theatre adaptation of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s letters; as well as stage adaptations of John Steinbeck’s fiction; Ernest Hemingway’s short stories; Clyde Edgerton’s Where Trouble Sleeps; and Thomas Wolfe’s The Lost Boy. He has also written articles on the adaptation of literature for the stage, Irish theatre, and intercultural theatre that have appeared in numerous journals and books. His book Staging Intercultural Ireland: New Plays and Practitioner Perspectives (co-edited with Charlotte McIvor) was published by Cork University Press in 2014. Matthew Spangler is Professor of Performance Studies at San José State University in California.
Hosseini's ability to reach the core of experiences of love and
loss places him in the company of such fine chroniclers of the new
America as Chang-rae Lee. The Kite Runner is a first novel of
unusual generosity, honesty and compassion.
*Guardian*
A devastating, masterful and painfully honest story ... It is a
novel of great hidden intricacy and wisdom, like a timeless Eastern
tale. It speaks the most harrowing truth about the power of
evil
*Daily Telegraph*
The shattering first novel by Khaled Hosseini ... a rich and
soul-searching narrative ... a sharp, unforgettable taste of the
trauma and tumult experienced by Afghanis as their country
buckled
*Observer*
But the play is a phenomenally powerful piece of theatre which for
many people will portray Afghanistan in a totally new light
*British Theatre Guide on Matthew Spangler's adaptation of 'The
Kite Runner'*
An accomplished adaptation by Matthew Spangler ... This show, a
European premiere, stands shoulder to shoulder with the best work
in the regions and judging by the thronging auditorium ... [they
have] a hit on [their] hands that deserves to travel the country
beyond its scheduled stops of Brighton and Liverpool
*Daily Telegraph on Matthew Spangler's adaptation of "The Kite
Runner"*
Matthew Spangler’s dramatisation, worked on with Hosseini’s help
and blessing, rightly seizes on the potent personal story at the
heart of the novel: the tale of two boys, Amir and his father’s
servant Hassan, brought up as near brothers in the same house. The
staging traces their story simply and vivaciously
*Financial Times on Matthew Spangler's adaptation of "The Kite
Runner"*
An enthralling tale beautifully told, at once topical and
emotionally resonant
*Daily Telegraph on Matthew Spangler's adaptation of "The Kite
Runner"*
Matthew Spangler's script . . . preserves Hosseini's sensitive
portrait of a friendship marred by tribalism and betrayal.
*Evening Standard on Matthew Spangler's adaptation of "The Kite
Runner"*
Khaled Hosseini's 2003 novel [has] been transformed into a
seriously good piece of storytelling theatre that takes flight just
as the onstage kites do . . . This stage adaptation . . . is that
rare and magnificent thing: a real sleeper hit . . . it feels in
the tradition of War horse and could well be the best page-to-stage
show since then . . . it has a similar integrity that speaks of a
real commitment by its creative team to telling this story with an
unforced economy that is also full of emotional weight. Matthew
Spangler's adaptation offers a gripping portrait of two young lives
that become inextricably linked.
*Stage on Matthew Spangler's adaptation of "The Kite Runner"*
The touching story of the novel is carried on stage by the
turbulent ups and downs, echoing the ducking and diving of a
fighting kite that will come up winning.
*Independent on Matthew Spangler's adaptation of "The Kite
Runner"*
Adaptor Matthew Spangler has admirably condensed Hosseini's epic
novel . . . there is no sense of constriction . . . Spangler
skilfully balances the scenes in Asia with those of the Afghan
refugees seeking to maintain their dignity and culture in the
West.
*Sunday Express on Matthew Spangler's adaptation of "The Kite
Runner"*
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