Staging the Great War in the British Theatre between 1914 and 1918

This paper will demonstrate the diverse ways in which theatre across Scotland, Wales and England, responded to and represented the experience of war between 1914 and 1918. Drawing on extensive data from ‘Recovering First World War Theatre’ – an ongoing project recording data on every new play written and licensed for performance during the Great War – the paper will explore both geographic and temporal trends in the wartime performance of war-themed plays.

Analysing these trends in relation to the wider context of the conflict the paper will reveal how theatrical representations engaged with both national and local experiences of, and attitudes towards the war. It will show, for example, how the spate of 1914/15 spy plays such as The Man Who Stayed at Home reflected contemporary newspaper-fuelled hysteria over naturalised German spies; how the melodramatic representations of Hun villainy which dominated in 1915 plays such as In the Hands of the Hun drew on refugee stories of German brutalities; and how after the Military Service Act of 1916 plays like My Superior Officer turned away from encouraging men to enlist and focussed instead on encouraging civilians to fulfil their national duties. It will also consider the social function of ‘front line’ plays such as The Better ‘Ole (1917), and of those tackling the return of the soldier such as Settling Day (1918). In mapping these temporal shifts in wartime repertoire the paper will also consider the impact of geographic locality: examining, for example, whether towns serving as gateways to the war or which had experienced air raids, staged plays in response to their experiences. Through combining an overarching analysis of wartime theatre production with specific examples of plays, the paper aims to show that wartime theatre offers a valuable and long-overlooked lens through which to understand the experience of conflict.