Acts of War

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. From the violence on the battlefield and in the cells of Guantanamo to the toll exacted on veterans, victims, and civil society, these seven plays explore the costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Writting with poetic passion, humor, and erotic charge, American and British playwrights bear witness to the realities of these wars for combatants and civilizing-alike and ask what it means to be a citizen in a democracy at war. With an introduction that sets the plays in the broader context or the theater's toots and recent history and a galvanizing foreworth from Pulitzer Prizeûwinning author Chris Hedges, Acts of War is a remarkable testament to the social conscience and moral importance of contemporary theater.