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September 2014
Performance: The Hallowed Turf
Gazebo Theatre presents The Hallowed Turf A Story of Soldiers, Football and Heroes A young man’s dream of becoming a footballer is brought to the front when he meets his hero on a very different front line. This powerful and heartbreaking new play shares the true story of footballing star Walter Tull, the first black combat officer to serve in the British army in the First World War, told through the imagined letters of a young unknown soldier. Featuring Oraine…
Find out more »October 2014
Performance: The Hallowed Turf
Gazebo Theatre presents The Hallowed Turf Thursday 16 Oct, 7:30pm, The Drum The Hallowed Turf is a story of soldiers, heroes... and football. Based on the life of pioneering footballer Walter Tull, the first Black officer to serve in the British Army in World War One, and told through the imagined letters of a seventeen year old soldier who befriends him, this incredible story is a cornerstone performance of this year’s Black History Month celebrations, ideal for all audiences, and…
Find out more »Performance: Foreign Fields with The Play House
Foreign Fields is a new piece of children's theatre created by The Play House theatre in education company to mark the centenary of WW1. It uses research by the Archives and Heritage Service at the Library of Birmingham to explore how the war in Europe affected the lives of people in Birmingham. Based on the experiences of real people and actual events logged in the archive, it tells the story of Brummie Herbert Owens and Belgian refugee Elisa de Haes who work in Hudson's…
Find out more »November 2014
Performance: Each Slow Dusk
A startling new play about action, humanity, and the legacy of war. The Private misses the farm. The Captain dreams of painting. The Corporal relishes the fight. And a hundred years later, The Woman seeks to understand. Each Slow Dusk charts the Experiences of three young men serving on the western front, linking their stories to a woman today, just home to her village after a tour of the battlefields. You’ll never walk past a war memorial in the same…
Find out more »Performance: The Christmas Truce
December 1914. As families across Europe gather to celebrate Christmas, a generation of young men find themselves far away from their loved ones in the trenches of the Western Front. There they face a world seemingly devoid of any peace or goodwill. But on Christmas Eve 1914, as the men of the Warwickshire Regiment shelter in their trenches, something astonishing happens. Across no-man's land they hear music. The German soldiers are singing Christmas carols; the same carols their families are listening…
Find out more »December 2014
Performance: Remembering the 1914 Christmas Truce
Following on from the success of the First World War commemorative programme of events in August, Birmingham City Council is continuing to commemorate the First World War with an event marking the 100th anniversary of the Christmas Truce of 1914. Late on Christmas Eve 1914, men of the British Expeditionary Force heard the German soldiers singing carols and patriotic songs and saw lanterns and small fir trees along their trenches. Messages began to be shouted between the trenches. The following…
Find out more »March 2015
Performance: Clocking On
Come and join us as we see the ups and downs of a single shift in a Birmingham factory and eavesdrop on the women who kept the factory lines working while men were fighting at the front. Facing the toils of manual labour, dealing with loss and embracing new opportunities, the women are beginning to contemplate the future. When the war ends, can life go back to what it was before? Clocking On is the culmination of a heritage research…
Find out more »May 2015
Performance: F.A.N.Y. Five Women. One War. One Purpose
Innovative Theatre Company 'Anonymous is a Woman' present First Aid Nursing Yeomanry: The story of the incredible women who drove ambulances from the front line of the bloody battlefield to the nearby hospitals in WW1.The show is based on real accounts already accessed from the F.A.N.Y records and the Imperial War Museum, and adapted from a novel by Robert Radcliffe. So little has ever been said about these war women; now as part of the Imperial War Museum's Centenary Partnership…
Find out more »Performance: Oh What a Lovely War
Direct from Theatre Royal, Stratford East, the legendary musical, Oh What A Lovely War comes to The REP to commemorate the 100th anniversary of World War I. Oh What A Lovely War is a satirical masterpiece that brilliantly summarises the First World War in a hilarious and provocative way. It’s a riot of music, colour and larger-than-life characters and features some of the greatest war-time songs including the much-loved Pack Up Your Troubles In Your Old Kit Bag. Ian Reddington…
Find out more »October 2015
Performance: Talbot House: A Home from Home
During the Great War, Talbot House in Poperinge, Belgium, a few short miles behind the front line, became a haven for thousands of allied troops – a ‘home from home’ where they enjoyed some home comforts and remembered the men that they really were. Run by a diminutive chaplain named Tubby Clayton the house became known by its army signaller’s code of Toc H and ultimately would be the inspiration for the association with that name. This play, written by…
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