Six real-life Falklands/Malvinas war veterans, who once faced each other across a battlefield, now face each other across a stage in Argentinean director Lola Arias’ enthralling Minefield.
The show comes to HOME as part of the venue’s 24th annual ¡VIVA! Festival, celebrating theatre, film, and contemporary visual art from Spain and Latin America. Minefield plays for three performances only, on Thu 12 – Sat 14 April 2018.
Presented by the London International Festival of Theatre (LIFT), the six one-time
combatants share memories, films, songs and photos as they recall their collective war and embody the political figures that led them into it.
Soldier,veteran, human – these men have stories to share as they take us from the
horrors of war to today’s uncertainties, with brutal honesty and startling humour.
Digging deep into the personal impact of war, Minefield, is a collaboratively created work that merges documentary, theatre and film to explore the minefield of memory, where truth and fiction collide.
The production features Gabriel Sagastume, a soldier who never wanted to shoot a gun and who is now a criminal lawyer; Marcelo Vallejo, a mortar direction controller who today is a
triathlon champion; Ruben Otero, who survived the sinking of the ARA General Belgrano and who now plays in a Beatles tribute band; David Jackson, who spent the war listening and transcribing radio codes and who now listens to other veterans in his role as a counsellor.
Sukrim Rai, a Gurkha and knife-expert who now works as a security guard; and Lou Armour, who was on the front page of every UK newspaper when the Argentinians took him prisoner on 2 April 1982.Today, he is a teacher for children with learning difficulties.
In 2014, LIFT commissioned Lola Arias to produce Veterans, a project commemorating the centenary of the First World War. The resulting work was a video series of Argentinian veterans recollecting their involvement in war.
In 2016 a partnership between LIFT, the Royal Court Theatre and the Brighton Festival
enabled Veterans to develop into Minefield, with a hugely successful sell-out run
at the Royal Court followed by an enormously acclaimed international tour.
“War isn’t what interests me,” explains Lola Arias. “It’s what comes after the war that 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.”
