War correspondent to speak at La Jolla Playhouse July 8 to coincide with the current drama onstage, Blood and Gifts

From Playhouse Reports

Award-winning journalist

Tim McGirk

, former

Time Magazine

bureau chief and war correspondent, will discuss his experiences in Afghanistan after the 2 p.m. Sunday, July 8 performance of “Blood and Gifts,” at the La Jolla Playhouse.

McGirk’s appearance is part of the Discovery Sunday series, which brings a special guest speaker to the Playhouse to engage audiences in a post-performance discussion exploring the issues and themes of each play. The event will be moderated by KPBS Arts and Culture Reporter Angela Carone.

Making its West Coast premiere, “

Blood and Gifts,”

a drama by J.T. Rogers, directed by Lucie Tiberghien, tells the story of the secret spy war behind the official Soviet-Afghan War of the 1980s. Spanning a decade and playing out in Washington D.C., Pakistan andAfghanistan, the play offers up a slice of historical fiction laced with dark humor.

The ground constantly shifts for CIA operative Jim Warnock and his British, Russian and Pakistani counterparts as the political and personal alliances between the men keep changing. In this thrilling, high-stakes game of cat-and-mouse,

“Blood and Gifts”

depicts the unknown men who shaped one of the greatest historical events in recent history, the repercussions of which continue to shape our world.

Tim McGirk

is a former

Time

magazine bureau chief and war correspondent, who has covered the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the hunt for al-Qaeda. He also worked as a foreign correspondent in Europe, North Africa, the Middle East, South Asia and Latin America for

Time

and prior to that for the British daily

The Independent

.

His work has also appeared in

National Geographic, Esquire, Sports Illustrated

and other publications. McGirk was the recipient of the Henry Luce Award for Reporting and, in the U.K., the Foreign Press Association’s 2006 Print Story of the Year award for his investigation into the killing of 24 Iraqi civilians by U.S. Marines at Haditha, Iraq. Having reported on Pakistan and Afghanistan since 1990, McGirk has witnessed the fall of the Soviet-backed regime inAfghanistan, the civil war between rival Afghan militias, the rise and fall of the Taliban, the U.S. invasion after 9/11 and the long aftermath.

He is currently lecturing in journalism at the University of California, Berkeley, and is managing editor of the Investigative Reporting Program at theirGraduate School for Journalism.

For tickets visit

LaJollaPlayhouse.org

or call the Playhouse Box Office at

(858) 550-1010

.