LONDON, Feb.11: A series of 12 plays collectively called the Great Game: Afghanistan has been commissioned by the Tricycle theatre in London to familiarise Britons with the history of the country where thousands of British troops are in operations against the Taliban.

“It is a history project, without being in the least bit dry,” said Nicolas Kent, artistic director of the theatre.

“Afghanistan is going to affect all our lives. People are coming home injured, or not coming home at all. We have a lot to learn about the historical backdrop: about how British and Russian self-interest caused so many of the problems in the country,” he added.

The half-hour dramas will be staged from April 17 and June 14 and can be seen either four at a time over three evenings or, at the weekends, all 12 over a single day. A number of “verbatim” interviews with politicians and the military, assembled and edited by Richard Norton-Taylor of the Guardian, will also be performed.

The 12 playwrights include Stephen Jeffreys, best known for the play and film The Libertine; Abi Morgan, who adapted the screenplay for the forthcoming film of Sebastian Faulks’s Birdsong; and David Edgar.

Morgan has taken as her period 2002; “the moment after the Taliban has gone and the people are trying to re-launch the country. It’s about a community coming to terms with the losses and gains of the arrival of the American forces.”

Another playwright, Simon Stephens, whose play Harper Regan was last year staged at the National theatre, will look at British troops in Helmand province — and what happens when they go home.