Ten years after Minefield transformed the Malvinas War into a haunting piece of documentary theater, Argentine playwright Lola Arias is still asking the same question that started it all.

What does war do to the people who survive it?

On a call from Berlin, Arias told the Herald that the play — which returns to Argentina as part of the celebrations for the Buenos Aires Herald’s 150th anniversary — was actually sparked by a British invitation. In 2012, the Battersea Arts Center in London asked her and other artists to participate in a series called After a War aimed at reflecting on the 100th anniversary of World War I.  

“As an Argentine woman raised in the 1980s, I started to think, what’s my relationship with war? And then Malvinas came up.”

Two years later, Arias premiered Minefield at the 2016 London International Festival of Theater. Featuring six war veterans from Argentina, the UK, and Nepal, who revisit their war experiences in a documentary/musical setting, the play was an instant hit and toured in almost 40 cities around the world. 

The play will run in Buenos Aires in November at the Coliseo Theater, produced by Daniel Grinbank and the British Council.

It has been 10 years since Minefield, a work of documentary theater that deals with actual people’s lives and memories of the war. How do you incorporate the passing of time into an ongoing play?

The play was rewritten over the seven years the play toured — the last show was three years ago. Not a major rewrite, but new thoughts, memories, and details were added. The main change in recent years was that Lou Armour, one of the veteran English actors, left. We replaced him with another veteran who is also an actor. Obviously, the play bears witness to the passage of time because it’s impossible for a play about life itself not to reflect on time and its impact on people’s lives.

The Malvinas issue, on the other hand, feels kind of stalled in political or diplomatic terms, where the only fresh perspectives seem to come through art. Have you noticed any new approaches?

I was always very clear that sovereignty was never the central theme of the play. The play explores how war affects a group of men over time — they are now around 60 and went in to combat at 19 or 20. Another topic is this idea of........

© Buenos Aires Herald