The lived experiences of Army life, past and present, will be brought to the Edinburgh Fringe stage for another year following the success of the ‘Army at the Fringe’ 2017 debut. Of ‘The Troth’, one of the shows taking place at the Hepburn House Drill Hall Army Reserve Centre during the city’s festival season, Mira Kaushik said;

“It’s a story about soldiers, so it’s relevant any time. It’s a human story, it’s a very accessible story. So, it’s all about emotions of the boys who leave home, who go to all sorts of conditions which they are not familiar to” (Forces News 2018).

The presence of military theatre at the Fringe appears as part of a much wider trend. The narratives of military personnel and their families are stories of great public interest, and are increasingly emerging in civil society as dramatic productions for public consumption (see Cree 2018). More broadly, this is further evidence that “the literature of war is increasingly escaping from between the covers of books and engaging directly with a wider popular culture of war as entertainment” (Woodward & Jenkings 2012; see also Cree 2018).

References:

Cree A. (2018) The Hero, The Monster, The Wife: Geographies of Remaking and Reclaiming the Contemporary Military Hero. Avaiable at http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/12561/1/Thesis_Alice_Cree_with_corrections_(1).pdf?DDD14+. Accessed 16/08/18.

Woodward R and Jenkings NK. (2012) Military memoirs, their covers and the reproduction of public narratives of war. Journal of War & Culture Studies. 5(3): 349-369.

Forces News. (2018) Army Fringe Returns for Another Year. Available at https://www.forces.net/news/army-fringe-returns-another-year. Accessed 16/08/18.