On 31 December 1937 F L (‘Peter’) Lucas, classicist, Bloomsbury writer, Cambridge fellow, resolved to keep a diary for one year, motivated by a growing sense of dread at the approach of war. He was researching a new play based on Icelandic saga in collaboration with his younger wife, classicist and artist, Prudence (‘Prudey’) Lucas (née Wilkinson).

Through 1938 Peter and Prudey travelled and researched the Laxdæla saga restlessly, until Prudey’s growing mania led to her complete breakdown at the height of the Munich crisis. Soon after Journal Under The Terror 1938 was published Peter Lucas began divorce proceedings, and Prudey is barely mentioned in the book. Having turned to the study of psychology during his wife’s illness, Lucas becomes increasingly fascinated by the science of the mind and will spend WWII working for British Intelligence at Bletchley Park.

The Nervous State is a dramatic adaptation of Lucas’ Journal by playwright Nicola Baldwin, in collaboration with Julie Gottlieb, Professor in Modern History at the University of Sheffield, whose books on women’s political and cultural history include Feminine Fascism and Guilty Women. It draws on Julie Gottlieb’s current book project concerning the impact of appeasement and the deepening international crisis on mental health, including a number of suicides triggered by the emergency circumstances of the time. She began to notice a pattern that suggested the internalisation of political crisis with the growing fear of war throughout 1938, which in turn led to an epidemic of mental illness.

Nicola Baldwin is an award-winning dramatist whose plays often explore individual psychological experience of momentous events, such as the Abdication crisis (The Crisis of Wallis Simpson) and global pandemic (Camberwell Green) – both Radio 4. For the Imperial War Museum, she recently contributed to an audio installation on civilian experiences of war to accompany the redesigned Second World War and Holocaust galleries, in collaboration with Manchester Jewish Museum and Devil’s Porridge Museum.

The project explores the subjective experience of History. Can a dialogue with history speak to our own nervous states in 2022? How do we feel as an audience of traumatic world events? Can shared storytelling and conversation help manage emotional reactions to global crises? What are the ethics of documentary theatre?

Digital design is by Tom Robbins, whose previous work includes Sheffield’s Migration Matters Festival.

This work-in-progress staged reading is followed by a panel discussion, and is intended to encourage wider conversation into the themes of the project and Professor Gottlieb's underlying research.

With:

Robin Simpson as F. L. LUCAS

Lucy Carter as PRUDENCE LUCAS

Laura Sophie Helbig as GUDRUN / The Nervous State

Devised and directed by Nicola Baldwin; Production researcher Cecilia Tricker-Walsh; Assistant director Becky Simon.

Panel guests include: Dr. Liat Levita, Dr. Rachel Lightstone, Dr. Carmen Levick, Dr. Jilly Gibson-Miller, Dr. Frances Babbage, and Donna Shoesmith-Evans.

With thanks to: Alex Rajinda Mason, University of Sheffield Knowledge Exchange programme and University of Sheffield Department of History; the Estate of F.L. Lucas and University of Reading Library; Dr Oliver Lucas; Hamish Walker, Fiona Walker.