A former prisoner of war, a survivor of the sinking of the Belgrano and a soldier who never wanted to shoot are among the performers drawn together for Royal Court show Minefield.
The cast of seven British and Argentinian survivors of the conflict – Lou Armour, David Jackson, Rubén Otero, Sukrim Rai, Gabriel Sagastume and Marcelo Vallejo – share their own experiences of the conflict in Lola Arias’ piece that runs from 2 to 11 June.
The production, playing as part of the LIFT festival 2016, brings together former enemies to tell a single story that blurs the lines between truth and fiction as it explores memory and how war continues to cast a long shadow over those caught up in it.
Speaking about the project, Arias said: “I’m interested in investigating what happens with time. In fact, this piece needed time. It needed 34 years. War doesn’t interest me, post-war interests me. What matters to me is what happens to a person who went through that experience. What matters to me is what memory has done, what it has erased, what it has transformed. Some have become professional storytellers and my work was and is to undo this in order to know what happened to them.”
Minefield runs in the Royal Court’s Jerwood Theatre Downstairs following the collaborative re-evaluation of Ophelia by Katie Mitchell, Chloe Lamford and Alice Birch, Ophelias Zimmer, which runs from 17 to 21 May.