First World War Plays

First World War Plays
Author: Mark Rawlinson
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 473
Release: 2014-06-19
Genre: History
ISBN: 1472532627

The First World War (1914–1918) marked a turning point in modern history and culture and its literary legacy is vast: poetry, fiction and memoirs abound. But the drama of the period is rarely recognised, with only a handful of plays commonly associated with the war. First World War Plays draws together canonical and lesser-known plays from the First World War to the end of the twentieth century, tracing the ways in which dramatists have engaged with and resisted World War I in their works. Spanning almost a century of conflict, this anthology explores the changing cultural attitudes to warfare, including the significance of the war over time, interwar pacifism, and historical revisionism. The collection includes writing by combatants, as well as playwrights addressing historical events and national memory, by both men and women, and by writers from Great Britain and the United States. Plays from the period, like Night Watches by Allan Monkhouse (1916), Mine Eyes Have Seen by Alice Dunbar-Nelson (1918) and Tunnel Trench by Hubert Griffith (1924), are joined with reflections on the war in Post Mortem by Noël Coward (1930, performed 1944) and Oh What A Lovely War by Joan Littlewood's Theatre Workshop (1963) as well as later works The Accrington Pals by Peter Whelan (1982) and Sea and Land and Sky by Abigail Docherty (2010). Accompanied by a general introduction by editor, Dr Mark Rawlinson.

Journey's End

Journey's End
Author: R. C. Sherriff
Publisher: Heinemann
Total Pages: 136
Release: 1993
Genre: World War, 1914-1918
ISBN: 9780435232900

The Heinemann Plays series offers contemporary drama and classic plays in durable classroom editions. Many have large casts and an equal mix of boy and girl parts. This play deals with the horror and futility of trench warfare, as Captain Stanhope and his officers await attack in their dugout.

Lord of the Nutcracker Men

Lord of the Nutcracker Men
Author: Iain Lawrence
Publisher: Laurel Leaf
Total Pages: 219
Release: 2009-01-16
Genre: Juvenile Fiction
ISBN: 0307537897

Ten-year-old Johnny eagerly plays at war with the army of nutcracker soldiers his toymaker father whittles for him. He demolishes imaginary foes. But in 1914 Germany looms as the real enemy of Europe, and all too soon Johnny’s father is swept up in the war to end all wars. He proudly enlists with his British countrymen to fight at the front in France. The war, though, is nothing like what any soldier or person at home expected. The letters that arrive from Johnny’s dad reveal the ugly realities of combat — and the soldiers he carves and encloses begin to bear its scars. Still, Johnny adds these soldiers to his armies of Huns, Tommies, and Frenchmen, engaging them in furious fights. But when these games seem to foretell his dad’s real battles, Johnny thinks he possesses godlike powers over his wooden men. He fears he controls his father’s fate, the lives of all the soldiers in no-man’s land, and the outcome of the war itself.

The Cambridge Companion to British Theatre of the First World War

The Cambridge Companion to British Theatre of the First World War
Author: Helen E. M. Brooks
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 299
Release: 2023-09-30
Genre: Drama
ISBN: 1108754325

The first comprehensive guide to British theatre's engagement with the First World War over the last century, providing accessible and lively coverage of theatre's role in the representation and remembrance of events, focusing on topics including regionality, politics, popular performance, Shakespeare, class, race and gender.

War Plays by Women

War Plays by Women
Author: Agnes Cardinal
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 242
Release: 2013-10-11
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1136357327

This anthology consists of ten plays from countries involved in the First World War, including plays from Germany and France never before available in translation. Representing a range of dramatic forms, from radio play to street-epic, from comic sketch to musical, this anthology includes plays from: Gertrude Stein, Muriel Box, Marion Wentworth Craig, Dorothy Hewett, Berta Lask, Marie Leneru, Wendy Lill, Alice Dunbar Nelson, and Christina Reid. Highly successful in their day, these plays demonstrate how women have attempted to use theatre to achieve social change. The collection explores the historical development of theatrical conventions and genres and the historical context of social and gender issues.

Humour in British First World War Literature

Humour in British First World War Literature
Author: Emily Anderson
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 242
Release: 2023-09-11
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 3031340515

This book explores how humorous depictions of the Great War helped to familiarise, domesticate and tame the conflict. In contrast to the well-known First World War literature that focuses on extraordinary emotional disruption and the extremes of war, this study shows other writers used humour to create a gentle, mild amusement, drawing on familiar, popular genres and forms used before 1914. Emily Anderson argues that this humorous literature helped to transform the war into quotidian experience. Based on little-known primary material uncovered through detailed archival research, the book focuses on works that, while written by celebrated authors, tend not to be placed in the canon of Great War literature. Each chapter examines key examples of literary texts, ranging from short stories and poetry, to theatre and periodicals. In doing so, the book investigates the complex political and social significance of this tame style of humour.

War Plays by Women

War Plays by Women
Author: Claire M. Tylee
Publisher: Psychology Press
Total Pages: 242
Release: 1999
Genre: Drama
ISBN: 9780415222976

This anthology consists of ten plays from countries involved in the First World War. It explores the historical development of theatrical conventions and genres and the historical context of social and gender issues.

Writing the First World War after 1918

Writing the First World War after 1918
Author: Adrian Bingham
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 328
Release: 2018-10-05
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0429891911

This book explores how print journalism was a powerful and persistent influence on public attitudes to, and memories of, the First World War in a range of participant nations, including Britain, France, Germany, Ireland, the United States and Australia. With contributions from an international group of history, journalism and literary studies scholars, the book identifies and analyses five distinct roles played by the print media: producing and narrating histories of the war or its constituent episodes; serialising and reviewing memoirs or fictional accounts written by participants; reporting and framing the rituals and ceremonies of local and national commemoration; providing a platform for various war-related advocacy groups or campaigns, from veterans’ associations to early Civil Rights movements; and using the war as a lens through which to interpret future conflicts. This innovative collection demonstrates the significance of journalism in shaping the public understanding of the First World War after 1918, and shows how the representations and narratives of the conflict reflected the political and social changes of the post-war decades. This book was originally published as a special issue of Journalism Studies.

German Literature and the First World War: The Anti-War Tradition

German Literature and the First World War: The Anti-War Tradition
Author: Brian Murdoch
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 320
Release: 2016-03-09
Genre: History
ISBN: 1317128443

The period immediately following the end of the First World War witnessed an outpouring of artistic and literary creativity, as those that had lived through the war years sought to communicate their experiences and opinions. In Germany this manifested itself broadly into two camps, one condemning the war outright; the other condemning the defeat. Of the former, Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front remains the archetypal example of an anti-war novel, and one that has become synonymous with the Great War. Yet the tremendous and enduring popularity of Remarque’s work has to some extent eclipsed a plethora of other German anti-war writers, such as Hans Chlumberg, Ernst Johannsen and Adrienne Thomas. In order to provide a more rounded view of German anti-war literature, this volume offers a selection of essays published by Brian Murdoch over the past twenty years. Beginning with a newly written introduction, providing the context for the volume and surveying recent developments in the subject, the essays that follow range broadly over the German anti-war literary tradition, telling us much about the shifting and contested nature of the war. The volume also touches upon subjects such as responsibility, victimhood, the problem of historical hiatus in the production and reception of novels, drama, poetry, film and other literature written during the war, in the Weimar Republic, and in the Third Reich. The collection also underlines the potential dangers of using novels as historical sources even when they look like diaries. One essay was previously unpublished, two have been augmented, and three are translated into English for the first time. Taken together they offer a fascinating insight into the cultural memory and literary legacy of the First World War and German anti-war texts.

British Theatre and the Great War, 1914 - 1919

British Theatre and the Great War, 1914 - 1919
Author: Andrew Maunder
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 303
Release: 2015-08-22
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1137402008

British Theatre and the Great War examines how theatre in its various forms adapted itself to the new conditions of 1914-1918. Contributors discuss the roles played by the theatre industry. They draw on a range of source materials to show the different kinds of theatrical provision and performance cultures in operation not only in London but across parts of Britain and also in Australia and at the Front. As well as recovering lost works and highlighting new areas for investigation (regional theatre, prison camp theatre, troop entertainment, the threat from film, suburban theatre) the book offers revisionist analysis of how the conflict and its challenges were represented on stage at the time and the controversies it provoked. The volume offers new models for exploring the topic in an accessible, jargon-free way, and it shows how theatrical entertainment of the time can be seen as the `missing link’ in the study of First World War writing.