s                                                                                  Jack .

Shell-shock in WWI and what came after.

 

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Next performances.

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When:

 

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Edinburgh Festival Fringe. 

Surgeons Hall  Venue 3, 1-10 pm. 

August 2nd to 24th 2024.  

No performances on Sundays August 11 and 18. 

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Jack was written in early 2013.

Stephen Wale spent several years researching family history and the background of the period. 

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Jack tells of a time when little to nothing was understood concerning the response of ordinary men with orderly lives whose sense of secure being was destroyed by sights sounds and stresses to horrible for the mind to absorb. The enormity of the distress these men brought home forced society to accommodate them and, within the compass of the time, help to heal their suffering.

Jack was fortunate in as much as he had his family until the end. Many of these irreparably damaged soldiers lived on into the 1970's, in large institutions, without family to anchor them. They just faded away, their contribution and their shattered lives seemingly unremarked. “Jack” is an attempt to restore their lives to memory.

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Stephen Wale left school 1964, aged 15.  He first worked in retail, factories, and warehouses. In 1972 he got his Equity Card as Assistant Stage Manager at The Belgrade, Coventry. In 1973 he was accepted into Drama Centre London. He started his professional career with BBC School's television in summer 1976 under the producer Andre Mollineux. His professional stage debut was as The Back LegsF Of The Cow at The Lyceum Crewe in 1976, directed by David Sumner. TV credits include, Dr. Who, The professionals, Partners In Crime (Agatha Christie), Mr. Palfrey Of Westminster, The Headmaster (Dir: Roland Joffe), and, of course, The Bill. He made a BBC Playhouse, Days At The Beach, written and directed by Malcolm Mowbray in which he played an incompetent gigolo. He has made numerous commercials. Stage highlights include Serious Money (five characters) by Caryl Churchill directed by Max Stafford-Clark at The Albury, The Illusion (Corneille) directed by Richard Jones at The Old Vic. He quit acting in 1994 in order to study at Ruskin College Oxford. In 1995 he started his studies in Social Anthropology at Queen's University Belfast as “The Troubles” had begun to ebb. He graduated (II.I) in 1998. He returned to acting in 2013 after after an extended period of globetrotting.  Japan remains he favourite destination.

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Acknowledgements.

Special thanks to Ian Flintoff of Pitchfork Productions for his generous support and and input. Thanks also to the late acting coach (and great friend) Penny Chater for her valued insights and detailed suggestions- RIP. And a big thank you to Paul Halman, an Australian friend and colleague who lent me his sunny apartment complete with swimming pool for three months in order to write. Thus far, performances have been hosted in Leicester Central Library, Newark Houses Museum, Leicester, North London Buddhist Centre, Brixton Community Hall, and Upstairs At The Western, in Leicester, and The Etcetera, Camden Town.