The Great Indaba description
The Great Indaba is a new play about the meeting, thousands of miles from Belfast, that helped move the Good Friday Agreement forward.
An indaba is a gathering called to settle something that matters. In the months before the 1998 agreement, negotiators from Northern Ireland travelled to South Africa to sit down with people who had come through a comparable process, and the play dramatises what happened in that room. It is a true story about diplomacy carried out away from the cameras, and about the argument that peace remains reachable even where conflict looks permanent.
This is a world premiere and one of eight new works in the National Theatre's 2027 programme. It runs in the Olivier Theatre, the largest of the three auditoriums, and is a co-production with MGC.
The play is by Moira Buffini, whose Handbagged transferred to the West End and whose Welcome to Thebes and Dinner were both staged at the National Theatre. Her screen work includes Jane Eyre, Tamara Drewe and the series Harlots.
The director is Indhu Rubasingham, Director and Co-Chief Executive of the National Theatre. She ran the Kiln Theatre for more than a decade and her productions include The Father and the Assassin at the National Theatre and Red Velvet. Casting has not yet been announced.
Book tickets for a true story about how a conversation in the wrong hemisphere helped end a war.
