University of Portsmouth students take on the role of WWII soldiers

A student-led theatre group from the University of Portsmouth is performing their idea of the ‘unknown warrior’ during WWII  in Southsea on 13 July..

Il Burattino focuses on three Italian soldiers (telling three different stories) who realise they have lost everything and who they are, which scares them more than death. The idea of the production is to understand when, at the end of everything, the only pure thing about these soldiers was their childhood- the only time they were truly naive before being brainwashed by Fascism.

Miguel Mota, Morgan Turner and Rodrigo Lopes, who are all studying BA (Hons) Drama and Performance, founded Trouble In The Square, a theatre company based in Portsmouth, after being surrounded by all sorts of war memorabilia from WWII around the city. With the idea of war becoming closer after Russia and Ukraine´s conflicts, or Palestine and Israel´s, they ask themselves what it is to be a soldier.

Miguel said: “We are working to depict the truth of someone who once fought for life and the pride of a country. We can agree that we all celebrate the idea of an "Unknown Warrior", but that this can be utterly unfair to someone who had a name, a family, a story, and is now summed up by a statue.

“Every time we watch a movie or play about WWII, we always watch it from the hero perspective,  the winning side, but never from the side of the people who knew they were fighting for nothing, for an evil belief.”