The Second Minute

During the First World War around nineteen thousand mailbags crossed the channel every single day and the art of letter writing enveloped the country, as people of all ages and from all classes tried to keep in touch with sons, brothers, husbands and lovers.

Scraps of paper with hastily written messages of love; requests for salted bacon and shaving brushes; letters telling of harvests, gas attacks, births and deaths; all carefully carried between home and the chaos and insanity of the trenches.

To mark the centenary of the First World War, Nottingham Playhouse are working with playwright Andy Barrett. This simply staged, poignant and uplifting new show, based on the letter collection from the archive of the Sherwood Foresters regiment, weaves together heroic, comic, and heart-breaking tales of soldiers and families through their own words and explores how this vanishing form of communication managed to hold the country together whilst a generation of men was being destroyed.