In Autumn 2014 Blackeyed Theatre Company tours Stephen MacDonald's Not About Heroes to over forty theatres across the UK . Marking the centenary of the beginning of The First World War, this major revival of MacDonald's play, about the poets Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen, performs from 10 September until 6 December 2014.
Stephen MacDonald's beautifully written play chronicles the unique and deepening friendship that developed between Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen, from their first meeting in 1917 at the Craiglockhart War hospital where both were being treated for 'war neurosis', to their final meeting in August 1918, shortly before Owen's return to active duty.
Seen through the eyes of the older Sassoon - who is remembering events from fourteen years previously - the play interweaves extracts from their real diaries, letters and poems and suggests that their intense friendship was key to unlocking Owen's genius as a poet and liberating him as a man. The playwright
Stephen MacDonald wanted to understand how this relationship, "could leave such an indelible mark on the literature of their war and so on our understanding of war itself', and hoped that the play "might refresh the memory of who these men were and what it was they had to tell us".
One hundred years on from the beginning of the First World War, Not About Heroes is both exhilarating and uncompromising in its exploration of love, war and a friendship that changed the face of British poetry. Eliot Giuralarocca directs
James Howard, whose credits include the
Donmar Warehouse and
Royal Shakespeare Company, and Ben Ashton, who has recently worked with the Watermill in Newbury as well as the RSC, in a production that features music composed by Tom Neill, set design by Victoria Spearing, costume design by Jenny Little and lighting design by Charlotte McClelland.
Director, Eliot Giuralarocca, said "The friendship between Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon was forged 100 years ago, in the unique circumstances of the First World War and left us poetry that still burns brightly today. I hope my production of Not About Heroes will give the audience a visceral and sensual theatrical experience that brings their moving story to life".
For more information on Not About Heroes visit www.blackeyedtheatre.co.uk.
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