TEMPUS FUGIT: TROY AND US Comes to Edinburgh Fringe This Month

The mighty hero on the battlefield and the passive woman who wrings her hands at home - Tempus Fugit: Troy and Us is set to challenge our deeply ingrained images of war.

Staged at part of Army@TheFringe, the show digs deep into the myths and exposes the realities of conflict, putting women's experience at the forefront.

Created by NMT Automatics, it combines mask work, dialogue and physical storytelling to look beyond the warzone to explore female courage and endurance.

Tempus Fugit: Troy and Us was developed in collaboration with Dr Alice König, senior lecturer in the St Andrews University School of Classics, who runs the interdisciplinary Visualising War Project and has carried out extensive research into "how war stories work and what they do to us".

Dr König, who regularly contributes to training courses for British armed forces, said: "From ancient tales like the Iliad to modern movies, we often show warfare in the same clichéd ways. In today's digital world, online gamers get to role-play as superheroes, and operate as lone shooters rather than as members of a unit, all following orders. From all sorts of media, we end up with a sanitised idea of conflict that can be very unhelpful.

"Tempus Fugit: Troy and Us has broken through the clichés about masculine heroism to understand the authentic experiences of men and women in the shadow of war and to tell the story from a more female perspective."

This matters, according to Dr König, because society needs to understand what it's military personnel and their families actually face when soldiers go to war - and what they have to deal with when, and if, they return.

It equally matters for the families themselves and their ability to face, and handle, the stress and potential trauma, both during and after deployment.

She said: "I know that a lot of military spouses, many of whom are women, really struggle with the expectations placed upon them - that you follow the army, you keep home, and through all of that you keep a stiff upper lip. You only worry or struggle in private."

The show's co-creators and performers Genevieve Dunne and Jonathan D'Young also carried out interviews with military families in order to ensure its authenticity.

The result is a story that intertwines the ancient Greek tale of Hector and Andromache with that of Bea, a 21st century British soldier's wife and her husband Alec who struggles to re-assimilate after returning from Afghanistan.

Bea gets drawn into a radio adaptation of The Iliad. Mask work is used to present the fantasy relationship Bea develops with Hector, the ultimate hero, who stands in stark contrast with the demon-haunted Alec.

Genevieve said: "Stories of war, and the impact of war, are still overwhelmingly told from the soldier's perspective, and that remains a largely male view.

"We wanted to change this. In following Bea, and the trauma she goes through as events unfold, we are putting the focus on female endurance and feminine courage.

"We also hope that the juxtaposition between the ancient and modern worlds will allow audiences to see past their own views of the modern British military and approach the show as a piece of storytelling that opens new worlds and new ways of seeing things."

The production was originally developed for The British Museum's Troy Exhibition in 2020 in collaboration with Dr Jon Hesk of the The Centre for the Public Understanding of Greek & Roman Drama, based at St Andrews University, and Alice König and Nicolas Wiater's Visualising War Project, as well as Army and the Arts, Trestle Theatre Company and The Redbridge Drama Centre. The project has also since been supported by Arts Council England.

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