During World War I, soldiers in opposing armies laid down their weapons and met in the no man’s land between the trenches. They sang Christmas carols and celebrated together in a brief counterpoint to the horrors of war.
That story is told in "All is Calm: The Christmas Truce of 1914" at Asolo Repertory Theatre in Sarasota. WUSF's Cathy Carter spoke with Peter Rothstein, the show's creator and the company's producing artistic director,.
How did you come to discover this part of history?
I first learned about the Christmas truce through a folk song by John McCutheon. It's called "Christmas in the Trenches." When I heard it, I thought, oh, this is a lovely bit of fiction. I didn't really believe it to be true. And then a book came out by Stanley Weintraub called "Silent Night," which was the first thorough documentation of the truce. I immediately read the book, and was so taken with the details of the story that I knew I wanted to create a piece of theater around it.
And the Christmas Truce of 1914 was not technically one single truce. It was a series of unofficial ceasefires?
So, we think there were seven or eight truces along the Western Front that year. Some were a simple ceasefire, but we know others, the men left their trenches. They played soccer, they exchanged tobacco or chocolate. At one spot along the front, they took time to bury their dead. So, some of them lasted an hour. Some lasted the evening, but we know some lasted a week.
You mention the song and the book that inspired you to learn more about this story, but it was another real-world event that spurred you into action?
I was actually in Florida visiting my mother the night that the US invaded Baghdad, and that was the trigger for me to say, I have to write this piece of theater. And that very night, I bought a flight to Europe. And I spent numerous weeks in Belgium, London, France, Germany, going to various military museums. In Brussels, which was my first stop, you enter between two cannons at the Royal War Museum. In London, at the Imperial War Museum, you literally walk underneath a fighter jet. The curation of those war museums tended to focus on the commanding officers, the strategy, the number of casualties. But I went to a museum in Ypres, Belgium along the Western Front, and there's an extraordinary museum there called the In Flanders Field Museum. And when you enter, there's a mural of men who appear to be looking you in the eye, and they're all nameless. There's no plaque, and I thought those are the men who are at the center of this story. And part of the play is, we say their names out loud because the show is based on all real text. We say their name and their regiment, because I want their names to go down in history.
So, after learning all you could about the Christmas Truce of 1914, how did you then develop it into a story?
So as I began to do my research, I was trying to figure out what form this show should take, because the lack of conflict is ultimately the climax of the story, which doesn't make for great drama. And because it had been so denied its place in history, I thought, oh, if I could tell this story in their own words and their own songs, it would be much more powerful than any kind of piece of fiction I would write around it to carry the narrative. So, it's everything from letters home, journal entries, war diaries, official war documents. I pulled things from gravestone inscriptions along the Western Front, really a wide range of text, and then the songs are iconic World War I songs, but also Christmas carols from all the participating countries. So, the show is performed, I think, in six different languages, and I wanted it to feel somewhat abstract, because I think the theater asks the audience to engage their imagination, because when you bring yourself to it, it ends up being a much richer experience. Most people say, 'oh, I like the movie, but the book was so much better.' And the book is usually better because you're engaging your own imagination to paint the picture right? I could never encapsulate what would happen inside that vast space of no man's land where we think hundreds, if not thousands, of soldiers had the courage to leave their trenches and spend that time together. Only imagination can really achieve that.
"All is Calm: The Christmas Truce of 1914" is now playing at Asolo Repertory Theatre in Sarasota.
