Charlie Ward

Charlie Ward is now available to experience at home:

An intimate, immersive and immensely powerful sound installation places its audience in the heart of a makeshift wartime hospital, where an unlikely therapy brings solace and comfort to those injured on the battlefield.

Some say that British soldiers in the trenches held up cardboard cut-outs of Charlie Chaplin’s tramp in the hope that the enemy would die laughing. But as the carnage of war set in, Chaplin’s image was put to a different use. To boost morale, medical staff at improvised hospitals near the front line arranged for Chaplin films to be shown for the bedridden, with the ward’s ceiling serving as the silver screen.

For one soldier on Charlie Ward, the flickering images, whirring projector and Chaplin’s perfect comic timing trigger complex emotions and memories. Cast from the trenches to childhood, from trauma to dreams, the hospital film show sets him on a journey into a personal no man’s land.

Co-commissioned by 14-18 NOW and Fuel, Charlie Ward was a sound installation lasting around 15 minutes and presented to audiences of just 10 people at each performance.

Produced by Fuel.

★★★★ ’Affecting and constantly surprising’ Lyn Gardner, The Guardian

‘Hauntingly beautiful’ Rupert Christiansen, The Telegraph

★★★★ ‘Like the most arresting dreams, it lingers in the mind long after waking up.’ Catherine Love, The Guardian

★★★★ ‘A short, sharp and meticulously realised meditation on the traumas of battle.’ Neil Cooper, The Herald

★★★★ ‘genius’ The Times

★★★★ ‘an eternal moment of grief, memory and tragi-comic genius.’ The Scotsman