Staging Ancient and Modern War Stories with NMT Automatics

07/28/21 • 60 min

In this episode, Alice and Nicolas interview members of NMT Automatics, a theatre company which specialises in updating ancient myths for modern audiences. Co-founders Jennie Dunne and Jonathan Young have been working with director Andres Velasquez and dramaturg Mairin O'Hagan to develop a new play, Tempus Fugit: Troy and Us, which weaves together an Ancient Greek war story from Homer's Iliad with the tale of a modern military couple, Alec and Bea. The Visualising War project has been feeding into their research process, so we enjoyed catching up with them to find out how the play has evolved.
In the podcast, we talk about how ancient models of military heroism can both help and hamper our visualisations of war today, and the NMTA team explain how they use ancient characters like Hector, Achilles, Ajax and Andromache to raise important questions about how war is imagined and experienced in the 21st century. They talk about the role that theatre and storytelling can play in deepening understanding of what soldiers, civilians and families go through, and how their play ended up focusing on the experiences of the military spouse. As they explain, what partners of serving soldiers go through is not discussed very often; but those partners spend a lot of time trying to visualise the wars which their loved ones are fighting in or preparing for, so they offer a fascinating perspective from which to explore wider habits of visualising war. Along the way, we chat about the cliches that often crop up when war is represented on stage and screen, and the important work that plays like Tempus Fugit can do in challenging assumptions and offering different viewpoints.
Among other questions, we asked:

What films/war stories shaped their habits of visualising war in the past?
What cliches about conflict do stage and screen dramatisations tend to reinforce? And what role can theatre play in challenging those cliches?
What can ancient war stories bring to modern understandings of war and conflict?
What connections do they draw between the experiences of Hector and Andromache in the Trojan war and modern conflict/military culture as experienced by Alex and Bea?
Why did they end up focusing on military spouses/partners, and what does that angle bring to the wider study of war?
What impact do they hope their new play, Tempus Fugit, will have on military and civilian audiences?

We hope you enjoy the episode!
For a version of our podcast with close captions, please use this link. To find out more about the wider research we have been doing into dramatisations of war on stage and screen, you can read this blog.
For more information about individuals and their projects, access to resources and more, please have a look on the University of St Andrews Visualising War website.

Music composed by Jonathan Young
Sound mixing by Zofia Guertin

What films/war stories shaped their habits of visualising war in the past?
What cliches about conflict do stage and screen dramatisations tend to reinforce? And what role can theatre play in challenging those cliches?
What can ancient war stories bring to modern understandings of war and conflict?
What connections do they draw between the experiences of Hector and Andromache in the Trojan war and modern conflict/military culture as experienced by Alex and Bea?
Why did they end up focusing on military spouses/partners, and what does that angle bring to the wider study of war?
What impact do they hope their new play, Tempus Fugit, will have on military and civilian audiences?

Music composed by Jonathan Young
Sound mixing by Zofia Guertin

Previous Episode

Ancient Warfare Magazine with Jasper Oorthuys and Murray Dahm

In this episode, Alice and Nicolas interview the editors of Ancient Warfare Magazine - Jasper Oorthuys and Murray Dahm. Founded in 2007, Ancient Warfare examines the military history of many different ancient cultures in Europe, the Middle East and parts of Africa and Asia, with a particular focus on Greece and Rome from around 1200BC to 600AD. It has thousands of readers all around the world – and thousands tune in to the Ancient Warfare podcast. We ask Jasper and Murray what their readers are looking for and what goes into the creation of each issue. That gets us chatting about the enduring appeal of ancient military history, the challenges of reconstructing what ancient warfare was really like, and what we gain from learning about and trying to visualise ancient warfare.
Among other questions, we asked:

Does Ancient Warfare Magazine foreground some aspects of war more than others? What aspects does it cover less often, and why?
How do the editors balance readers' expectations and habits of visualising ancient warfare with what their authors want to communicate and new advances in research?
What role do illustrations play alongside textual descriptions in bringing ancient warfare to life for modern readers? And how much creative interpretation goes into the magazine's artistic reconstructions of ancient warfare?
What factors influence modern reconstructions or visualisations of ancient warfare?
What challenges and responsibilities does the magazine industry/popular press have to think about when representing ancient warfare in the 21st century?

We hope you enjoy the episode!
For a version of our podcast with close captions, please use this link. If you want to find out more about Ancient Warfare Magazine, you can look up their latest issues here and listen to their podcast here.
For more information about individuals and their projects, access to resources and more, please have a look on the University of St Andrews Visualising War website.

Music composed by Jonathan Young
Sound mixing by Zofia Guertin

Next Episode

Achilles on Stage with Ewan Downie

In this episode, Alice and Nicolas interview Ewan Downie, an actor, writer, director and co-founder of the Company of Wolves, a laboratory theatre company whose mission is to make compelling drama ‘that speaks directly to the times in which we live’. Ewan recently staged a one-man show that explored the story of Achilles, an ancient Greek warrior made famous by Homer's epic poem The Iliad , which tells the story of the Trojan War - a topic we touched on in last week's podcast with NMT Automatics.
In this episode we talk about why the character of Achilles has always fascinated people and what kind of hero he actually is. As Ewan puts it, 'Setting Achilles on an army is a bit like a drone strike, nobody else has a chance - and yet we call this person a hero.' That gets us chatting about what we value in warriors, and what our heroisation of figures like Achilles can tell us about our wider habits of visualising and justifying acts of war. We also discuss the role that myths and archetypes can play in helping us understand our own impulses and behaviours - and how Ewan's representation of Achilles got audiences asking huge questions like 'why do we still kill each other?' In Ewan's words, mythology is a great tool in shaking us up and making us wonder who we are and what we want to be.
Among other questions, we asked:

How influential are ancient war stories on modern habits of visualising war?
What aspects of Achilles' story and character did Ewan want to emphasise, and why?
How have audiences responded to Ewan's harrowing representation of Achilles' rage and grief?
Could his deconstruction of the 'hero' Achilles be seen as 'anti war'?
What impact does he think theatre can have on how we see, question and understand conflict across time?

We hope you enjoy the episode!
For a version of our podcast with close captions, please use this link. You can find out more about Ewan's work and find clips of his plays on the Company of Wolves website.
For more information about individuals and their projects, access to resources and more, please have a look on the University of St Andrews Visualising War website.

Music composed by Jonathan Young
Sound mixing by Zofia Guertin