Not About Heroes

The story of the friendship between the First World War poets Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon, forged at the Military Hospital for Nervous Diseases at Craiglockhart in Edinburgh, has become well known through the novel Regeneration by Pat Barker. This fine play by Stephen MacDonald about the relationship of the two men pre-dates the book by twenty years.
 

NOT ABOUT HEROES explores the impact of Owen and Sassoon on each other as men, as soldiers and as poets, and deals uncompromisingly with “war, and the pity of war.” It is, sadly, still all too relevant ninety years after the end of that war – and Owen’s death on the battlefield at the age of twenty-five.

Rowan Tree’s production will be directed by John Haswell, whose career as a director has taken him all over Scotland including the Scottish Borders where he has for many years directed productions of the Borders Youth Theatre.  

Music will be specially composed by the leading Scottish traditional musician Ian Lowthian. The production will be designed by the renowned theatre designer Gregory Smith who worked on Rowan Tree’s most recent production, Barry.

The actor Matthew Burgess, a veteran of Rowan Tree productions including the much praised Confessions of a Justified Sinner will play Owen while newcomer, Oliver Bissett, undertakes the role of the slightly older and more worldly-wise Sassoon.  
 

NOT ABOUT HEROES will open at Bowhill Theatre, near Selkirk, on Friday 17 October and tour throughout the Borders and to Edinburgh, Aberdeen and Shetland.  There will also be schools performances and a special performance at Craiglockhart itself, now part of Napier University.    

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