War Horse: When the fighting enemies stop the war to save an animal

War Horse:
When the fighting enemies stop the war to save an animal

A few days ago I watched the unfolding of a very unique love story, a theatrical experience that I will never forget. This time the love story was between a young 16 year old man “Albert” who lived in “Devon – England” back in 1912, and his horse "Joey".
A month after he is forced to give up his horse to the nation s army, Albert runs away to the front line during Wold War I to find “Joey". He joins the battle between the French and German armies, where he is temporarily blinded whilst fighting behind enemy lines.
The play vividly depicts the intense and beautiful relationship that develops between humans and animals. It reveals the evil of war that affects everything it touches, be it human, animal, family´-or-nation. It also sheds light on the distorted relationship between Albert and his drunken father "Ted".
Characters
• The Horse and Puppeteers: This is the main character of the play. Despite that it is a puppet – not a live horse – the puppeteers manage to bring the horse to life and get the audience reaching for their tissues.
• Albert Narracott: The teenager in love with his horse.
• Rose Narracott: Albert’s mother
• Ted Narracott: Albert’s father
• Billy Narracott: Ted’s nephew who wants to own the horse, he dies in the war
• Arthur Narracott: Forces his son “Billy” to go to the war.
• Matron Callaghan: French woman finds protection with one of the enemy’s soldiers “Fredrick”.
• Emilie: Matron’s daughter.
• German and French Soldiers: Two animal lovers who stopped the war and peacefully engaged in the common cause of saving Joey who is tangled in barbed wire in No Man s Land.
Plot summary
• Act one
This starts with the pony, being auctioned off, in a bidding competition between Arthur Narracott - who hopes to give the pony to his son Billy – and his brother “Ted Narracott”, whom he hates since he refused to fight alongside him in Africa. Ted’s wining the bid (39 guineas) infuriates his wife “Rose” as he used the mortgage money to buy a thoroughbred pony that is completely unsuitable for work on the farm.
Albert promises to raise and train the pony – which he names Joey - until he is ready to be sold. Albert teaches Joey to plough a field in order to save him being lost to his Uncle “Arthur” because Ted makes a second bet with Arthur that he can teach Joey to plough within a week. If he fails Arthur wins Joey, if he succeeds Ted would be no longer required to repay his debt of 39 guineas to Arthur. Once again, Ted wins.
• Act two
A month later (December 1912) and whilst the town celebrates Christmas, news of the outbreak of World War I reaches the town. Ted sells Joey to Lieutenant James Nicholls, breaking his word that Joey would always belong to Albert. The Lieutenant promises Albert that he will personally look after Joey.
From the battlefield Joey and Topthorn - another army horse - are shipped to France where the German machine-guns overwhelm the French and cause a huge losses to their army. When Albert becomes aware that Lieutenant James Nicholls is killed in the battle he decides to volunteer for the army in an attempt to find his horse, despite that he is too young for military service.
Joey and Topthorn join two other horses that die along the way but Joey manages to survive. He runs into the heated battle and becomes entangled in barbed wire in the middle of No Man s Land which belongs to neither the Germans nor French. The French and the Germans put a plan and stop the war to save the horse.
Meanwhile, Albert gets temporarily blinded by tear gas and they take him to a medical camp where he meets Joey again and takes him home.
Reflection and Opinion
War Horse is a play based on the book of the same name by Michael Morpurgo, adapted for stage by Nick Stafford. The show premiered at the National Theatre on the South Bank, London, in 2007 and returned for a second and third round in 2008 and 2009. Since then War Horse has been showing in New York on Broadway, followed by a USA national tour--;-- Toronto (Canada), Melbourne (Australia), Berlin (Germany), and then finally Sydney’s Lyric Theatre.
This is one of the best contemporary plays that I have seen, despite that it is a children’s story and the plot is a bit naive.
War Horse can break your heart, because it’s such a traumatic, joyful, and touching story. Despite that the dialogue of the play is very simple, and sometimes naive, it manages to make us know how both the actors and puppeteers feel and think about important themes like, love, family, war and peace.
The story is brought to life by gifted puppeteers and skilled actors in an amazingly real-life environment.
During the play, the puppet horse is at all times in desperation not only to live as a "horse" on the stage, but also a "horse who is struggling to live" in the story. The puppet s main signs of life are demonstrated in how he breathes, moves and behaves like a real horse. This distinguishes the horse from the actors on the stage, and makes the puppets the main personality in all scenes.
Unlike the actor and author, who struggle to die on the stage to get audience to interpret their message the way they see fit (Barthes 1977 and Foucault 1979 – see endnote), the puppet struggles to live on the stage and in the audience memories. This forms the main metaphor of the story of war and life, which was revealed in its peak when the fighting parties (French and German) stopped their fighting specifically to save the horse s life.
The puppet horse structure allows two individuals inside it, with a man in the front who is using a rod to move the head including the ears and neck. The two individuals inside the structure control the horse s breathing and the body movements including the two front legs - moved by the person in the front - and the two back legs move by the person in the back. The legs and the tail of the puppet seem to be controlled by the person who forms the back part of the horse s body. Puppeteers give the puppet life through their natural behaviour, movement, sound, breathing and reaction to different actors on the stage. I felt my heart racing every time, the horse puppet got into trouble--;-- and could hear the audience’s gasps as actors interacted with the horses.
The visual storytelling (video, animation and overhead projector) , lighting and stage design formed part of the story and added a great deal of understanding to what is behind the dialogue and events transpiring on the stage. In addition, it illustrates the changes of the story time, setting and actions. This was displayed in the upper area of the stage with an oversized torn piece of fabric stretching across the background, cleverly illuminated with different images used to illustrate changes in time, setting and action.
Endnote
In his famous book "Image Music Text", Barthes (1977) announced “the death of the author” and “the birth of the reader”, and that “a text’s unity lies not in its origin but in its destination” (Barthes, 1977:148). He stated that the "scriptor is born simultaneously with the text, [and] is in no way equipped with a being preceding´-or-exceeding the writing” (Barthes, 1977:145). Foucault (1979) defined the author as a --function-- that appears within the textual experience, i.e. the speaker, the narrator´-or-the orchestrator – not as a subjective consciousness to which we appeal to grasp the meaning of the text (Foucault 1979). He differentiated between the notion of the author’s "work" and “text”--;-- and questioned whether everything that an author wrote, said,´-or-left behind is part of her´-or-his work (Foucault 1979). Foucault sees a text as “a space into which the writing subject constantly disappears” (Foucault 1979, p.102) - readers try to envisage this space in which the text is diffused and the time is unfolded. And, yes, all texts of different authors are made from the same textual material and cannot be separated from each other (intertextuality). Despite all these similarities between texts of different writers, Foucault advised that each text is encoded with personal signs and symbols that determine its author (Foucault 1979). These signs are similar to personal pronouns, adverbs of time and place, and verb conjugation (Foucault 1979).

Rate the article
Bad	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	Very good
Result : 40%							Participated in the vote : 3