Question

The Silver Tassie

Accepted Answer

The Silver Tassie is a four-act Expressionist play about the First World War, written between 1927 and 1928 by the Irish playwright Seán O'Casey( Seán O'Casey (Irish: Seán Ó Cathasaigh [ˈʃaːn̪ˠ oː ˈkahəsˠiː]; born John Casey; 30 March 1880 – 18 September 1964) was an Irish dramatist and memoirist. A committed socialist, he was the first Irish playwright of note to write about the Dublin working classes) . It was O'Casey's fourth play and attacks imperialist wars and the suffering that they cause. O'Casey described the play as "A generous handful of stones, aimed indiscriminately, with the aim of breaking a few windows. I don't think it makes a good play, but it's a remarkable one."

Plot
An antiwar play in four acts, focusing on Harry Heegan, a soldier who goes to war as if going to a football match.

Act 1 : The opening presents Harry in the prime of life, as an athletic hero, but unaware of the possibilities and values of life.
Act 2 is a sudden change of tempo, being an experiment with expressionist and symbolic theater. Set at the battlefront it unexpectedly concentrates on the cynicism and despair of the common soldier at the front lines.
Act 3 portrays the bitterness of the veterans in a veterans’ hospital
Act 4 contrasts the grim plight of the disabled Harry Heegan with the vitality of those who were not combatants and have normal lives and futures to anticipate.
The play's study of Harry’s loss of many of his life’s hopes during and after the war marks it as unusual.

Play Act Irish Harry Silver Tassie Expressionist Playwright