Khuda Baksh rocked back and forth in sheer delight with his hand pressed hard over his mouth – the 40-year-old blacksmith from Bamyan was like an excited child. Until this week he had never seen a play before, and now he's seen two – albeit the same play twice.

“I enjoyed myself very much,” he said after watching the play, New Hope , for a second time in the Central Highlands town of Bamyan this week. He has no television, or even a radio, and said he was “very excited and most happy” just to get some entertainment.

But the point of the play, apart from entertainment, is to educate Afghans about the up-coming September 18 parliamentary and provincial elections, and it was not lost on him. “I learned that I should vote for a good person,” Khuda Baksh said. “I learned that it is important that we vote for good people to help us with the problems that we face.”

The play, New Hope , was written and directed by the well-known Afghan playwright Qader Farukh and is sponsored by the Asia Foundation and implemented by the Foundation for Culture and Civil Society and Sayara Media Communication. It focuses on issues that affect Afghans, such as poor roads, crime, the need for better health care and the need for the citizens to vote for candidates they believe will help them address those problems.

The program has been extremely successful in raising awareness of the process of democracy in a country where few people have access to media and there are high rates of illiteracy.

There are seven different troupes of actors who have been touring throughout Afghanistan and, according to the Asia Foundation, almost 90,000 people have seen 132 of the 218 scheduled shows this year. Many of the actors were well known in Afghanistan prior to the Taliban and some are household names, as actors on the popular BBC radio drama New Home New Life.

In a similar program last year, for the presidential elections, more than 300,000 Afghans turned up to watch the plays.

In Bamyan, civic educators from the JEMBS spoke before and after the play to remind voters that they need to have their voter registration cards if they want to vote in the up-coming elections. Voter registration begins on June 25 and runs for one month.

18-year-old Bamyan school student Mohammad Ali was too young to vote last year, but says he will register to vote this time around.

“It is important that we vote so that we have good leaders,” he said after a performance of New Hope this week. “Me and my friend will be registering and we have learned today how we can register.”