‘My country has been imagined enough. My country is the creation of foreign imaginings.’

So says Afghanistan’s President Najibullah in The Great Game, a Tricycle Theatre production which traces foreign involvement in Afghanistan since the 1840s.

The play is currently finishing a British Council-supported tour of the United States with a final, special performance.

This week the production, which attempts to depart from an ‘imagined’ Afghanistan to show a realistic, more rounded picture, will be performed privately for Pentagon officials in Washington.

Those central to US defence policy, as well as military personnel, will be present.

The Great Game, a series of 12 plays, seeks to build a new picture of Afghanistan by telling the stories of, amongst others, soldiers, teachers, Taliban, diplomats and deposed leaders.    

Before departing for its US tour, the production played for an audience at the UK’s Ministry of Defence, after which Britain’s top military commander, General Sir David Richards, said:

‘The Ministry of Defence as a whole, and certainly the armed forces, desperately want to understand [Afghanistan] well, and this series of plays – if I had seen it before I had deployed [there] myself in 2005 for the first time – would have made me a much better Commander.’

Confronting complex issues

By creating a space for thought, exploration, and new understandings, the British Council had hoped to evoke equally strong reactions from an American audience.

‘Theatre is a place where we can confront complex issues of  personal and political discourse, think, feel  and debate, and then emerge wiser, more experienced and somehow refreshed,’ says  Simon Gammell, the British Council’s Head of Arts in the US.

‘We may hope The Great Game will have an impact on the American people, and indeed the leaders of the American forces, by giving them a safe place to think deeply about the history of international engagement with Afghanistan.’

Since September the play has been touring the US, travelling from New York to California. The Pentagon performance is a fitting finale to this epic and successful journey.

‘There was tangible and growing excitement from the audience, building through the day as people listened and listened - and then filled the two long intervals with animated discussion of what we were witnessing,’ says Simon Gammell at a public performance of the play in San Francisco.

‘I think the most common reaction was one of gratitude that we had at last been given the opportunity to understand what Afghanistan means.’

Head of British Defence Staff in the US, Michael J Harwood, says that he hopes the plays will confirm to a Pentagon audience ‘that many of the world’s challenges require in-depth understanding, patience, resilience and respect – and the absolute necessity of thinking through our own actions beyond their first-order effects’.

Art produces controversy

Other recent tours of British theatre overseas have sought to get people talking on an international level about big issues.

The British Council supported a US tour of Black Watch, a play based a Scottish regiment’s experience in Iraq. The tour was so successful it is now embarking on a third run there.

Damascus, a David Greig play, toured Syria and the Middle East in 2007, provoking lively debate and discussion on both the themes of the play and on the right of a Western playwright to comment on Syrian society.

‘If we’re going to deal with the really important issues, sometimes we need to deal with art that produces controversy,’ says Simon Gammell.

‘It is because the Arts provoke a reaction from the audience, engendering a new understanding or perception, that they are such powerful channels for international cultural relations.

‘And that’s why they are a central element to our mission to build trust and understanding between people of different cultures.’

• Watch our Chief Executive, Martin Davidson, relfect on The Great Game.