Unicorns, almost his one man play based on the life and poetry of the WWII poet Keith Douglas was developed by Old Vic, New Voices.
Welcome to our war. The Two Worlds of Charlie F. is a soldier's view of service, injury and recovery. Moving from the war in Afghanistan, through the dream world of morphine-induced hallucinations to the physio rooms of Headley Court, the play explores the consequences of injury, both physical and psychological, and its effects on others as the soldiers fight to win their new battle for survival at home. Drawn from the personal experience of the wounded, injured and sick Service personnel involved, Owen Sheers's The Two Worlds of Charlie F. premiered at the Theatre Royal Haymarket, London, in January 2012 and toured nationally that summer. It was revived for an international tour in 2014. 'Powerfully affecting - Gripping. The authenticity of verbatim drama and the saltiness of barracks-room humour with the finesse of something more lyrical.' Telegraph 'An evening of rare, raw power.' Independent A proportion of the writer's royalties from the sale of this script will be donated to the Marefat High School in Kabul, Afghanistan.
School friends still in their teens, Arthur, Hads and Taff each have their own reasons for enlisting. Within a short space of time they return to the women in their lives (a mother, a wife, a girlfriend), all of whom must now share the psychological and physical aftershocks of their service.
Mametz by Owen Sheers was premiered by National Theatre Wales in June 2014. It is one of the set plays on WJEC’s A level Drama specification. This dual edition combines the original English-language play with a Welsh-language translation by Ceri Wyn Jones, one of Wales’s most eminent poets.
In 1966 a coal slag heap collapsed on a school in south Wales, killing 144 people, most of them children. Poet Owen Sheers has given voice to those who still live in Aberfan, the pit village in which tragedy struck, and uses their collective memories to create a striking work of poetic power. This is a portrait not just of what happened, but also of what was lost. What was Aberfan like in 1966? What were the interests of the people, the social life, the sporting obsessions, the bands of the day? What was the deeper history of the place? Why had it become the mining village it was, and what had it been before the discovery of coal under its soil? Perhaps most significantly: what is Aberfan like today? The Green Hollow is a historical story with a deeply urgent contemporary resonance; a story of what can happen when a community is run by a corporation. It is also a story known along generational rather than geographic borders. Based on the BBC 1 production, The Green Hollow is a beautifully rendered picture of a time and place – and a life-altering event whose effects are irrevocable.