Description
Margery Forde‘s Snapshots from Home was commissioned to commemorate the 50th Anniversary of the end of World War II in the Pacific. The play combines a series of ‘snapshots’ linked together by visual images, radio broadcasts, dance, music and song.
“We just carried on… even with our loved ones away for so long. Everyone shared things… food, knitting and dressmaking patterns. There was this great feeling of pulling together… of making do.”
Based on the wartime memories of 24 men and women from Brisbane and the Sunshine Coast, Snapshots from Home shares the stories of ordinary people living through extraordinary times. An honest, heartbreaking, and hilariously funny glimpse at the realities of life on the home front during World War II.
HISTORICAL SIGNIFICANCE:
This play gives us the human face of war. It is not a picture we are familiar with from television, action movies and video game adventures. We are challenged, not only to observe the impact of war on the lives of real people, people who could be members of our families, but also to question our own attitudes and values to the world in which we live. Margery Forde was originally commissioned by Prime of Life Arts Project Officer, Marie Cunningham, to write a theatre piece based on the wartime memories of twenty-four men and women from Brisbane and the Sunshine Coast. These people shared their stories with oral historian Sue Pechey and the interviews were recorded. She was then given six hundred pages of the transcripts. From these, she then set about choosing moments which could be dramatised to tell the story of what life was like on the Home Front for this particular group of Australians.
“I did not want this to be a retrospective piece or to have a sense of ‘knowing’. It was important that it had an innocence and an immediacy, and be told from the perspective of those who had lived through the events.” – Margery Forde
PRODUCTION HISTORY:
Snapshots from Home was first performed at the Cremorne Theatre, Queensland Performing Arts Complex, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia on the 16th November 1995.
This is a Playlab New Vintage Title.
ISBN: 978-1-76161-000-4