Shoot, I Didn't Mean That/The Last Days of Mankind with Time Zone Theatre

A thrilling double bill that hauls the realities of WW1 into the present
moment and asks what happens to life when war takes over.

Marking the centenary of the outbreak of WW1, Time Zone Theatre and Austrian director Pamela Schermann invited British playwrights to respond to Karl Kraus’s The Last Days of Mankind. The winning play, Shoot, I didn’t mean that by Catriona Kerridge, will run alongside a staging of the epilogue of Kraus's epic. The resulting double-bill aims to encourage an intercultural dialogue about global conflicts combining a play by one of the most influential Austrian playwrights of the 20th century with an emerging British talent.

Director Pamela Schermann said, ‘I was excited to see what The Last Days of Mankind means to young British playwrights. Kraus’s play centres around the absurdity of war and the people who are forced to continue their lives under these morbid circumstances.’

Kerridge’s dark comedy follows four women’s strange and surreal downfall as they become intoxicated by the politics of The Great War. Juliet waltzes into a difficult situation at Vienna’s famous flea market; two schoolgirls struggle not to giggle during a Remembrance Day service; and an interpreter loses her voice. Shoot, I didn’t mean that is play about a shared fear for the future, inspired by Karl Kraus’s The Last Days of Mankind.

Karl Kraus’s response to the outbreak of WW1, its impact on the lives of the people, and the role of the media is made up of over 200 scenes across five acts, one for each year of the War, following fictional characters, archetypes and historical figures. While the main play was naturalistic, using material from newspapers and actual conversations, the epilogue takes on an expressionist, apocalyptic vision of a world destroyed by war.

Supported using public funding by Arts Council England and by the Austrian Cultural Forum London.