TAKING its title from a line in Philip Larkin’s poem MCMXIV, Deborah McAndrew’s new play An August Bank Holiday Lark explores the impact of the First World War on a rural community in Lancashire.

In the idyllic summer of 1914, everyone is excited about Wakes week; a rest from field and mill and a celebration of the Rushbearing Festival with singing, courting, drinking and dancing. The looming war barely registers, but it will.

This Northern Broadsides touring production follows the stories of the people of the village and witnesses their transitions from exuberance to touching naivety as they deal with loss with courage and humanity.

“An August Bank Holiday Lark focuses on one small community and the, often overlooked, British involvement on the Eastern Front,” says Deborah, whose play arrives at York Theatre Royal on Tuesday. “Countless Lancashire lads exchanged the soft Pennine drizzle for the searing Turkish sun and gave their lives at The August Offensive in Gallipoli.

“The play never leaves the village of Greenmill, but remembers the fallen and wounded – and those for whom the War was far away and over long before the guns were finally silenced.”

Deborah was given the play’s title by Broadsides director Barrie Rutter. “I didn’t know the Larkin poem though I’d heard of it,” she recalls. “Barrie gave me three things in his brief; he wanted a play for 2014 to mark the centenary of the First World War; he wanted me to have An August Bank Holiday Lark as its title; and he wanted it to be about folk dancing. So I went to Cecil Sharp House to look up folk dancing traditions, and the more I looked, the more annual Rushcart Festival in Wakes Week swung it for me as it’s a northern tradition that happens on an August Bank Holiday.”

Deborah makes that festival in the cotton mill towns of Lancashire the the focus of her play. Rushes have many domestic and symbolic uses and rushbearing is the ancient tradition of bringing harvested rushes to the village church as floor covering for the winter. The Rushcarts evolved through the 19th century into elaborate thatched constructions, pulled by teams of North West Morris dancers.

The Rushcart, accompanied by a processional form of Lancashire clog dancing, was already in decline at the turn of the 20th century, a situation greatly exacerbated by the war. However, a revival in the 1970s has been highly successful and the Rushcart is now, once more, an annual festival in Uppermill, Sowerby Bridge and other Northern towns.

Deborah sets An August Bank Holiday Lark in a fictional East Lancashire village between August 1914 and October 1915 and she writes about the domestic experience of war through fictional characters caught up in real world events.

“Dancing is the key theme in the drama. As Larkin says in his poem ‘Never such innocence again.’ The Dance represents many different things as the story unfolds: fun, courtship and competition; affirmation of community and tradition; and finally Remembrance,” she says.

“My brief to myself was to keep it light; don’t go to the Front as it’s been done before and always very well; and not to refer to events at the Western Front but to those at Gallipoli.”

An August Bank Holiday Lark, York Theatre Royal, Tuesday to Saturday; West Yorkshire Playhouse, Leeds, April 8 to 19; Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, April 22 to 26. Box office: York, 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk; Leeds, 0113 213 7700; Scarborough, 01723 370541