This anthology consists of ten plays from countries involved in the First World War, including plays from Germany and France never before available in translation. Representing a range of dramatic forms, from radio play to street-epic, from comic sketch to musical, this anthology includes plays from: Gertrude Stein, Muriel Box, Marion Wentworth Craig, Dorothy Hewett, Berta Lask, Marie Leneru, Wendy Lill, Alice Dunbar Nelson, and Christina Reid. Highly successful in their day, these plays demonstrate how women have attempted to use theatre to achieve social change. The collection explores the historical development of theatrical conventions and genres and the historical context of social and gender issues.

This anthology consists of ten plays from countries involved in the First World War. It explores the historical development of theatrical conventions and genres and the historical context of social and gender issues.

As Karen Malpede points out in her introduction to Acts of War, drama "arose as a complement to, perhaps also as an antidote to, war." Like the great ancient Greek playwrights Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, the playwrights in this volume see the theater as an art form uniquely capable of addressing the effects of warfare. --

For years theater director Bryan Doerries has been producing ancient Greek tragedies for a wide range of at-risk people in society. His is the personal and deeply passionate story of a life devoted to reclaiming the timeless power of an ancient artistic tradition to comfort the afflicted. Doerries leads an innovative public health project—Theater of War—that produces ancient dramas for current and returned soldiers, people in recovery from alcohol and substance abuse, tornado and hurricane survivors, and more. Tracing a path that links the personal to the artistic to the social and back again, Doerries shows us how suffering and healing are part of a timeless process in which dialogue and empathy are inextricably linked. The originality and generosity of Doerries’s work is startling, and The Theater of War—wholly unsentimental, but intensely felt and emotionally engaging—is a humane, knowledgeable, and accessible book that will both inspire and enlighten.