INTERVIEW: Eric Sirakian on his journey to better understand ‘The Kite Runner’
Photo: From left, Amir Arison and Eric Sirakian star in The Kite Runner on Broadway. Photo courtesy of Joan Marcus / Provided by BBB with permission.
Actor Eric Sirakian is currently appearing on Broadway in The Kite Runner, the stage version of the acclaimed novel by Khaled Hosseini. This adaptation, which is playing a limited engagement at the Helen Hayes Theatre, is written by Matthew Spangler and directed by Giles Croft. Sirakian plays the pivotal character of Hassan, who is a childhood friend of Amir (Amir Arison). They hang out, joke around and fly kites in Kabul, Afghanistan. At home, though, they are separated because Hassan and his family work for Amir and his family, and this class divide comes to a head after a violent encounter. The backdrop to the drama is the changing winds in Afghanistan and the country’s war with Russia.
Sirakian is an accomplished actor who has appeared in The Jungle on the West End, plus Twelfth Night, The Comedy of Errors and Pericles at Shakespeare’s Globe. The Kite Runner is his Broadway debut.
“I was in London at the time, which is where the production originated, but that was a complete coincidence,” Sirakian said in a recent phone interview. “I actually auditioned by going to the Actors Equity open call, which was on Zoom, and after that was asked to send in a tape, followed by two meetings with the director and then one final callback with the whole creative team. So it was a five-step process that took place over the course of about a month in February of this year, and it was done pretty much entirely in my bedroom in London because it was all virtual. So I was really lucky. I mean, one nice thing about COVID was it gave me the chance to audition on Zoom, which hadn’t really been much of a thing before that, so being in London, I could be considered for something over here in New York.”
The actor said he loved Hosseini’s original book. He was quite young when it first came out, but he remembers reading it a few years after its publication and loving the prose. Amongst his family members and other immigrant families, the book was a sensation.
“It felt like here’s a major book that’s telling our story, and that had never happened before,” Sirakian said. “I remember my mom. She’s a doctor, and she mostly reads science stuff. But I remember her sitting down and reading it in one sitting and lots of people talking about it. It felt really, really important to us, even though I’m not Afghan, but just being part of an immigrant family it resonated really deeply. And so I knew the book from a young age. I read it again during the audition process and then a couple times again after getting the role, so it’s really rich, and it’s grown on me. It bears repeated readings for sure.”
Sirakian’s research for his role of Hassan (he also plays Sohrab) was quite extensive. In fact, one would be hard-pressed to find another actor on Broadway who has prepared as much as Sirakian. For starters, he needed to learn to be a kid again because much of the action takes place when Hassan isn’t even a teenager.
“There was a lot of really useful preparation that I did before starting rehearsals that had to do with exploring physically what it means to be 11, how to inhabit that, how to find the rhythms of that, the particular attention, curiosity that comes with being that age,” he said. “I did a lot of research into his background. He comes from an ethnic minority in Afghanistan. They’re called the Hazaras. They have been persecuted for hundreds of years, so they had a really difficult and sad history. But they’re also this amazing people, an amazing culture, so I interviewed about a dozen members of the Hazaras community when I was in London and then in New York, when I moved over here, just to learn as much as I could about that.”
Additionally, Sirakian learned about the country of Afghanistan, including its history and its language. He even took lessons in Dari, which is the Afghan version of Farsi (the first few lines of dialogue in The Kite Runner are in Dari).
“I found a teacher in Kabul, and I worked with him over Skype to learn the language,” the actor said. “Because I come from a culture that I’m very proud of, I’m really sensitive to cultures that don’t have much representation on stage, and I felt it was an enormous privilege and responsibility to play Afghan on Broadway, to represent these people and especially Hazaras, to represent these people in such a big way. So I wanted to do it justice. I wanted to learn and know as much as I could, so that was all the foundation.”
He added: “And then obviously getting to know the book really well, building a relationship with Amir. … We just became such great friends, and it feeds the work every single night because I don’t really have to pretend. In a very short space of time, we became very close, and that’s really helpful when the guy you’re playing opposite is meant to be the person you adore more than anybody else in the world. And then night by night, it’s just remembering how important this story is — in so many different ways, to so many different people, and honoring that and bringing my all.”
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
The Kite Runner, featuring Eric Sirakian, is now playing at the Helen Hayes Theatre on Broadway. Click here for more information and tickets.
