Josh Sinha October 15, 2009 Modern Drama in Performance Essay 1 A Man and a Horse The suns light

caresses the morning mist, while two white birds, pure as the air they fly in, dance embracing the warmth of the new day, careless of the trials and tribulations of the beasts below bounded to the cold earth. This is how War Horse begins, but it is not how it ends. War Horse, a play written by Nick Stafford, which is adapted from Michael Morpurgos childrens novel War Horse, is a multi-layered story encompassing many fictitious, yet representative individual stories from World War I. War Horse is a story of a boy and his horse. War Horse is a story of the cruelties of war, the commonality of man, and the great loss of innocence. If I were to describe to you, what my feelings of War Horse were right after I saw it, it would have to be a rollercoaster of emotion. As clichd as that might sound, the play filled me with suspense, happiness, anger, and sadness. Primarily plot driven, War Horse is a fantastic story that is epic in its scope, which spans from England to France and both sides of the warfront. Nevertheless, War Horse is primarily a story of a boy and his horse, and how they face the conflicts of the home life and war together and alone. While reading Nick Staffords play text to War Horse, I realized that the play thoroughly encapsulates and recreates the images, story, and themes that are found within the play. However, by the plays use of puppets, lighting and sound, the play adds and highlights themes that Nick Staffords play may have only suggested. One of the biggest themes of Nick Staffords book is the loss of innocence. Joey and Albert both go through life changing events that develop them into a war-horse and man

respectively. The book ends with Alberts mom saying A man, and a horseIt cant be(87, Stafford) which is her response to her husband asking who is that she sees in the distance. Rose, knows that this man and his horse are Albert and Joey, but because they seem so alien to her, so changed from their past selves she cannot describe them as her son and Joey, but simply as a man, and a horse. From this we see that Albert is clearly no longer a child, and can no longer be a child. Furthermore, she adds, it cant be meaning that in her mind it was a foregone conclusion that Joey had died in the war. Through the depiction of the play, however, the lighting and back screen add to the element of innocence lost. Throughout the play the lighting progressively gets darker. Eventually, when Albert reunites with Joey, the lighting is brighter, but is not as bright or as calm as the first opening scene with the birds flying over the field. By having the light become darker and darker as time goes on, it seems to allude to the darkness and cruelty of war. Additionally, the ending light is not as pleasant as the light at the beginning, seeming to indicate that nothing will be the same again. Moreover, by using a ripped back screen, it seems to evoke an image of carnage. It is an image of something irreparable, which can further enhance the theme of innocence lost. Common to both the text and the play is the concept of the horror and strangeness of war. In the text, Captain Nicholls body is meant to be left on stage throughout the play and to be seen as a constant reminder of his quick and meaningless death. While the performance does not keep this, it does use devices to greatly exaggerate and thus accentuate the cruelties and bizarreness of war. For example, when Captain Nicholls is killed, a huge spear like bullet is used which causes him to flip backwards due to its incredible force. There is also a scene where soldiers are killed in an onslaught of machine fire and fall down to the ground, where wheat

looms up into the sky as huge pillars of steel. Both of these images seem to indicate the extreme effects that a single death in war. Both images display the innate strangeness of a man killing another man, and thus portray the act in a very unnatural and alien way. Music plays a very important role in both the text and the performance. Both use songs, which lament the happiness of earlier days and how the passage of time will hopefully bring better times. The songs Snowfalls and Brisk Young Ploughboy are played multiple times throughout and are rich with these two themes. The use of these songs also helps to reinforce the idea of the cruelty of war. From music, however, comes one main difference between the play and the text. In the text, Joeys feelings are explicitly written down, but this cannot be done in the performance as clearly and so the music is used additionally to express what emotions Joey is feeling. In my opinion the musical tracks for War Horse, were very beautiful, and almost reminded me of a music track to a movie. There were certain ballads that were used to indicate certain emotions. I found these musical themes to almost unite the play, since a certain music theme would remind me of an earlier memory in Joeys mind. The biggest difference of course between the text and the performance, would have to be the use of puppets. By using puppets, some elements can be highlighted, and yet other elements cannot. At first, I must admit, I disliked the puppetry. The use of the birds on the sticks did not impress me, and the use of three people to manipulate a tiny colt was highly distracting. However, as time passed the puppeteers soon became invisible to my eye, and the creatures depicted on the stage came to life. To be honest, though, I never fully appreciated the puppets, until the day after when I began to think of potential reasons behind using the puppets. One of the most interesting things about the puppets, is the fact that they show the mechanization required to move the puppets. By

doing this, it seems to add a sense of grit and coarseness, which I think highly complements the setting of World War I. Furthermore, by using puppet soldiers, in the machine gun onslaught scene, it seems to add to the theme of the cruelties of war, as long as the utter disregard and expendability of life in this war. The puppets were made to appear ugly, and I believe this is to add to ugliness of war. Lastly, but most importantly, by using puppets, I think it seems to add another deeper layer to the play than what was discussed in the text. I feel that the use of puppets purposely alludes to the fact that all the men in war are being used like puppets by their superiors for a meaningless war. In addition to this, one can see the use of the puppets as a further extension of Alberts childhood and imagination, which is slowly lost as times goes by, as Albert is temporarily blind at the end of the play and so does not see anything but shapes. When I saw War Horse for the first time, I loved it. When I read War Horse after that, I loved it as well. Both were wonderful, both were rich with ideas and introspection on the human soul. Both also brought to light the complexity, the horrors, the senselessness, and the anarchy of war and were able to simplify it to the common, yet amazing story of a Man and his Horse.

Works Cited Stafford, Nick. War Horse. London: Faber and Faber, 2007. Print.