Rehearsals have started for Theatre by the Lake’s spring production of Not About Heroes, which follows the brief yet intense friendship between First World War poets Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon.
Matt Addis will play Sassoon and Philip Labey will play Owen.
Owen actually attended the Evangelical Christian Keswick Convention in 1912. He once described mountain climbing as the noblest sport, and after a near-miss on the battlefield credited “my forefathers, the agile Welshmen of the mountains” with giving him the swiftness to dodge the bullets.
Sassoon and Owen met in 1917 at Craiglockhart War Hospital for Nervous Disorders in Edinburgh, where they were both recovering from horrific experiences in the trenches of France.
The production opens March 22.