SIX Falklands/Malvinas war veterans who once faced each other across a battlefield now face each other across a stage in Minefield.

On tour at York Theatre Royal from Wednesday to Saturday, except Good Friday, this multi-media performance from Argentinian artist Lola Arias uses archive footage, live feeds, music by Ulises Conti and video projection by Martin Borini to present the personal and enduring stories of the aftermath of conflict.

Lola has worked with veterans David Jackson Lou Armour, Sukrim Rai, Gabriel Sagastume, Marcelo Vallejo and Ruben Otero to create a production that tells their stories and asks what is a veteran? A survivor? A hero? A mad man?

"War isn’t what interests me, it’s what comes after the war that interests me," she says. "What matters to me is what happens to a person who went through that experience. What matters to me is what memory has done, what it has erased, what it has transformed."

David Jackson spent the war listening and transcribing radio codes; now he listens to other veterans in his role as a counsellor; Lou Armour was on the front page of every newspaper when the Argentinians took him prisoner on April 2 1982, the first day of the war; now he is a teacher for children with learning difficulties. Sukrim Rai was a Gurkha and expert with his knife; now he works as a security guard.

Gabriel Sagastume was a soldier who never wanted to shoot a gun; now he is a criminal lawyer. Marcelo Vallejo was a mortar direction controller, now he is a triathlon champion. Ruben Otero survived the sinking of the ARA General Belgrano, now he is in a Beatles tribute band.

Best summing up the significance of Minefield, Lou Armour says: "What’s driven me to take part in this project is just how beautiful it is. War is awful, it damages not just those on the battlefield but family, friends and wider society. But out of something terrible and ugly has come something very beautiful: a play where humanity and redemption shines through."

York Press:

Argentinian documentary theatre maker Lola Arias

Here documentary theatre maker Lola Arias sets the scene for one of the most remarkable pieces of theatre ever to play the York Theatre Royal

What were your reasons or your need as an artist to create a piece from a conflict like the Falklands/Malvinas War, Lola?

"I grew up singing the verses of the Falklands March in the school – 'The Falklands are Argentinian, the wind cries and the sea roars' – studying with a map of Argentina with the islands drawn as part of our territory, remembering the dead soldiers every 2nd of April. I grew up with the feeling that someone had stolen part of our country. But beyond this nationalistic fervour learned in school, I did not know much about the war, what the soldiers had experienced, how was the post-war for the veterans.

"The work was a way of thinking about what the war meant for those who fought and those who stayed watching television. Minefield is a study on the collateral effects of war on a group of veterans and on society. It's also a social experiment, to see what happens if we join old enemies to reconstruct history."

You interviewed and filmed war veterans from both sides, British and Argentine. What was the process of finding them?

"This project began in 2013, when London’s LIFT Festival invited me to participate in an event called After A War, commemorating 100 years since the First World War. I started to investigate and interview Argentinian veterans to make filmed reconstructions of their memories in the places of their daily lives. Finally, I presented a video installation called Veterans.

"After that first video work, I started to wonder what the English people would have lived through and then I started thinking about doing a project with Argentinian and English veterans together reconstructing their memories of the war.

"The Argentinian veterans I interviewed were mostly civilians who had gone to war at 18 when they were doing military service, but some were also military. Most of them had begun their adult life after the war and had various professions, from doorman to opera singer. Some spoke of the thefts of food, of the lack of organisation, of the cold; others spoke of a heroic deed, of courage, of fighting.

"The English were all military. Many of them had retired very young, had later gone on to a university career and also had titles of teachers or psychologists. They talked a lot about military tactics, but also about what it means to kill or see someone die.

How willing were the veterans to participate?

"It was interesting to discover that both Argentinian and English men felt that their lives had been split in two by the experience of the war and that there was a before and an after. Everyone had a story to tell, something that had been fixed in their memory after more than 30 years.

"You never know how people will react to the experiment of rebuilding their own lives. Before the rehearsals, we had the veterans taken to a psychological care centre for advice. But in the end, in the process itself, things are defined. In some cases, we had to ask for help from specialists; in other cases we discovered how to work in the process itself."

How did you manage to make art and not a pamphlet or a settling of scores?

"Minefield is a bilingual work, which tells the story of veterans from two countries. The absurdity of the Argentinian military regime embodied by Galtieri or the warmongering haughtiness of Thatcher are not the focus of the project, although they appear briefly in some scenes.

"The work focuses mainly on the collateral effects that the war had on those who fought. Obviously, relations are established with the political context that had direct consequences on the lives of the protagonists. But throughout the work there is something very personal, very mental. What remains in the memory of someone who went to war? How is that story transformed over the years?"

LIFT presents Minefield at York Theatre Royal, March 28 to 31, except March 30, 7.30pm. Box office: 01904 623568 or at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.