Acts of War: Iraq and Afghanistan in Seven Plays

Book Launch was at The Drama Book Shop, Monday, April 25, 2011 at 5:30 pm.

Cover art: Luba Lukova

As Karen Malpede points out in her introduction to Acts of War, tragedy “arose as a complement to, perhaps also as an antidote to, war.” 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 seemingly reveals war, instantly, to the widest population, 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.  Northwestern University Press, forthcoming, March 2011. 

Includes:

       *Guantanamo by Victoria Brittain and Gillian Slovo

       *9 Circles by Bill Cain

       *American Tet  by Lydia Stryk

       *A Canopy of Stars by Simon Stephens

      *The Vertical Hour by David Hare

      *Prophecy by Karen Malpede

      *No Such Cold Thing by Naomi Wallace