Many other people have helped Frank and Daisy along the way. Thanks also to everybody in National Theatre Learning for their encouragement, to Stephanie Hutchinson who produced the workshops, and to Paul-William Mawhinnie and Tim Smith who performed the monologue unforgettably.
Thank you Michael, for allowing my imagination to canter alongside yours for a while. It wouldn’t exist without Michael Morpurgo’s wonderful and now legendary story, War Horse. I did, and as I learned more about the experiences of the Light Horse in Egypt and Palestine, particularly in 1918, I knew I wanted to take this story beyond the limits of a twenty-minute monologue. My friend Michael Morpurgo, author of the book War Horse on which the stage version is based, suggested I write the workshop script. They wanted somebody to write a short performance piece about Australian horses in World War One. They were also planning a series of workshops around the country, linked to the play and exploring aspects of theatre craft. The National Theatre in London was planning to bring its magnificent production War Horse to Australia. My own journey with Loyal Creatures started in 2012. And made what happened at the end of the war even more tragic and poignant. The special bond between those men and their animals was an important part of that chapter in Australia’s history. Many of the troopers in the Australian Light Horse took their horses with them when they sailed off to war. While Loyal Creatures isn’t a history book, I’ve tried to ensure that everything in the story could have happened to a young Australian trooper like Frank and to a horse like Daisy. Some enlisted well under the official army age of eighteen.
The Australian men and women who took part in World War One were all volunteers. As you allow them to live and breath in your imagination, I hope you sense my strong feelings for the many real individuals who inspired them. The desert campaign in Egypt and Palestine was an important part of World War One, and the role the Australian Light Horse played in the fighting was vital.īut Frank and Daisy and the other people and animals in Loyal Creatures are from my imagination. It is set in a real war, inspired by real events. Loyal Creatures is a story based on history, but it doesn’t attempt to be history. When I told Dad, he tried to wallop me round the head with a canvas bucket.
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