The audience at Sidney Harman Hall in Washington, D.C. usually buys tickets for Shakespeare or Oscar Wilde. But today’s performance — and the audience in line to see it — is completely different. In 2009, London’s Tricycle Theater performed “The Great Game: Afghanistan,” a seven-hour series of twelve plays commissioned by the theater’s director, Nicholas Kent. Last October, the Pentagon requested that Kent bring the play to Washington for two special performances. "The Great Game: Afghanistan" opens today for an audience that includes Pentagon staff, Afghan war veterans and President Obama’s advisers on Afghanistan

Douglas Wilson, assistant secretary of defense for public affairs, joins us to discuss why the Pentagon requested these performances.