From the
frontline of A Feast of Bones
Frances Kay 
We’re nearly
halfway through rehearsals now, and, coincidentally I’ve been talking to my
brother about our grandfather Edward Thornton Kay, who fought on the Western
Front in France during the Great War. I hadn’t known this when I started work
on the script for A Feast of Bones,
which is set in 1918. My grandfather volunteered with one of the ‘Pals’
Regiments, The South Lancashires, and was very likely to have been injured at
Messines Ridge in 1917 the day the Allied mines were detonated. This was the
inspiration for the back story of one of the characters in my play. Thousands
of Irishmen also volunteered; the first Victoria Cross (highest military honour
for bravery) awarded to an Irishman was in 1915, to Michael O’Leary from Cork.
What’s this
ancient War, that happened a hundred years ago, got to do with us? A very good
question. At the time it was called ‘The War to End all Wars.’ But after that
there was another World War, and then other bitter conflicts erupted that
killed thousands of innocent people and are still going on today, in Syria and
Afghanistan. War is a fact of our lives; in this play, we try to show how war
might be built into our very genes, making it almost impossible to give up our
notions of ‘enemies’ and ‘battles.’
In A Feast of Bones we don’t talk about the
Great War, but you can find it there in the underlying mood of the play. The
characters’ experiences of loss, grief and waste is happily counterbalanced by
Theatre Lovett’s irrepressible humour and high spirits, which for me embody the
most lovable aspects of a child’s personality, embracing tragedy and comedy in
the same day, and always, I hope, ending the day sunny side up.
Frances Kay, Writer
For more information and to book tickets click here
No comments:
Post a Comment