MISSION

“A work of art always consists of many parts, many facets and sides, and that means many aims. The artist cannot set himself political aims, the aims of changing a political regime; it may come as a by-product of it, but to fight against untruth and falsehood, to fight against myths, or to fight against an ideology which is hostile to mankind, to fight for our memory, for our memory of what things were like—that is the task of the artist.” —Alexandr Solzhenitsyn

raison d’ètre

Our production of Death Comes for the War Poets will be more than a mere dramatization of the horrors of war, as experienced by the two greatest war poets, Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen. Although it will see the war through their eyes, it will also see through the eyes of the Spirit of Death, the protagonist at the heart of the story.

The drama will move, therefore, from the physical to the metaphysical, asking fundamental questions about the human experience of suffering in general and war in particular. How does a human soul cope with the horror of war? Is there room for hope? And what of the Spirit of Death—ever present in times of war and peace? Can Death itself be changed? And love: what role does it play in the divine drama within which our lives unfold?

These questions, which seek to grapple with the problem of suffering and the enigma that the presence of death presents, will confront our actors portraying characters performing roles that are based in the deepest questions about life and death which we, as human beings, cannot avoid contemplating.