Acts of War: Iraq & Afghaniston in Seven Plays
Acts of War: Iraq & Afghaniston in Seven Plays
The greatest of the early playwrights wrote from experience Aeschylus and Sophocles were generals in the Athenian army, and Euripides was a combat veteran. Electronic media reports war instantly, but the stage provides an unrivaled venue for facing the horror of armed conflict on a human scale.This timely anthology of plays by American and British writers bears witness to the realities of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan for combatants and civilians alike and asks what it means to be a citizen in a democracy at war.
From violence on the battlefield and in the
cells of Guantanamo to the toll exacted on the homefront, the seven
plays collected by Malpede, Messina, and Shuman explore in depth the
costs of war. Sometimes with humor or erotic charge, always with
compassion and surprising insight, these contemporary plays return to
the theater a necessary social edge.
Karen Malpede s introduction
sets the plays in the broader contexts of theater s roots and recent
history, while award-winning journalist and author Chris Hedges provides
a foreword.