Play Reading in English: The Great Game - Afghanistan
HK English Speaking Union
- Mon 18-05-2015 7:15 PM - 2 h
Colette Artbar
Free admission
Synopsis
The Great Game - Afghanistan by various playwrights including Stephen Jeffreys and Amit Gupta
This month's play gives us a wonderful opportunity to look at some new modern political drama, with Events acting as the backdrop to the human drama 'on stage'. The Great Game – Afghanistan was originally published as part of the London Tricycle Theatre's Afghanistan Festival in April 2009, and subsequently revived in July 2010 prior to a tour in the USA when the drama was presented to the Pentagon as part of their war training, at a time of great Western military involvement in Afghanistan, but which is now much reduced. The Drama was originally presented as an all day trilogy with each act of each play written by a contemporary playwright. Part one entitled ' Invasions and independence 1842 to 1930 consists of four acts, namely Bugles at the gates of Jalalabad 1842, Durand's line 1893, Now is the time,1929 and Campaign, set in the present day. We will be reading this first part. Part two and part three look at Communism the Mujahideen and the Taliban from 1979 to the present day.
The term – The Great Game – was a term used to describe the strategic rivalry and conflict between the British Empire and the Russian Empire, as well as the Chinese Empire, in a bid for supremacy in Central Asia. The classic Great Game period is generally regarded as one approximately from the Russian Persian Treaty of 1813 to the Anglo Russian Convention of 1907, where Britain and Russia agreed not to interfere in Tibet, although Britain had invaded Tibet in 1904 because of fears of Russian expansion there, while maintaining a British presence in Lhasa until1944. The term the Great Game was introduced into mainstream consciousness by British Empire writer Rudyard Kipling in his novel Kim of 1901. While the first Afghan wars involved Britain, the 1980's saw Russian involvement again, while as of today the USA maintains a continued presence. Moral : History repeats itself...
Facilitators: Julian Quail and Mike Ingham
