Peter Rothstein knew he was onto something when he encountered the First World War story of the “Christmas Truce”, in which soldiers from the English and German armies briefly laid down their arms to share holiday songs in December of 1914. The question, though, was what?

“For a few years, I felt that there was a play there, but I couldn’t really get my head around what the format would be,” says the Minneapolis-based playwright, interviewed along with Chor Leoni artistic director Erick Lichte at a Mount Pleasant coffee shop. “The climax of the Christmas Truce story is the lack of conflict, which doesn’t really make for great drama.”

It’s a strong concept to build a Christmas concert around, however, as he discovered once he joined forces with Lichte, then with the Minneapolis men’s chorus Cantus. “I was just struck by how they were looking at chamber music outside of the box,” Rothstein explains, saying that he tries to take a similarly open approach with his own Theater Latté Da company. “So I contacted Erick, saying ‘I want to create a piece around this. I don’t know what it’s going to be. Are you interested?’ ”

“And I said ‘Yes!’ ” Lichte interjects, as both men laugh. “I’d known—very anecdotally, as most people do—that there was a Christmas truce, and that ‘Silent Night’ was one of the quintessential pieces of that. That was all I knew. But we wanted to work in theatre and we wanted that sort of collaboration, so it just seemed right to say yes, sight unseen.”

The two eventually settled on a format that’s part choral concert, featuring songs that would have been sung in the trenches, and part theatrical presentation. In the years since its 2009 debut, All Is Calm: The Christmas Truce of 1914 has become a beloved seasonal highlight in Minneapolis, and it looks ready to do the same here: four of the production’s six Vancouver Playhouse shows have already sold out.

For All Is Calm, Rothstein has written the text, based on soldiers’ letters from the early days of the First World War, and he’ll also direct. Lichte, along with Timothy C. Takach, has arranged the music, and he’ll conduct. But even after the two decided to work together it took a battlefield epiphany before they knew what form the show would take.

“I headed off to Europe to do research, and my first stop was Brussels,” Rothstein explains. “And when you enter into the Royal Museum of the Armed Forces there, there’s two big cannons that flank the entryway. And at the Imperial War Museum in London, you literally pass under a fighter jet to walk into the place. Clearly, those museums glorify war: they’re all about strategies and statistics, and the only people you read about are the heroes. But there’s a new museum in Flanders, the In Flanders Fields Museum, and when you walk in there’s this gigantic mural of nameless men staring down at you, and this extraordinary music playing, which is actually a medieval Celtic song called ‘Will Ye Go to Flanders’. I was so struck by how they were curating this, in relation to all those other museums, and that ended up having a big impact on how All Is Calm was written: how do I curate this piece of theatre in that same way?”

The answer, Rothstein says, is to treat the soldiers, both British and German, as individuals, beginning with the lone combatant who first ventured into no man’s land, at considerable personal risk, to sing “Stille Nacht” (“Silent Night”) for his khaki-clad enemies. In the process, he continues, he and his colleagues have made a powerful piece of antiwar art. There’s no glorification of conflict here: just beautiful singing and poignant sorrow.

In that, the director adds, he was also inspired by the In Flanders Fields Museum. “While I was there I got quite close to the chief curator, and I asked him one day ‘Are you an antiwar war museum?’ And he diplomatically said, ‘We could never call it that, but our goal is to put a human face on war, and I don’t know how you can do that and not be antiwar.’ And so that became the driving force: ‘How do I put a human face on this?’

“I think we as a culture have been inundated with images of war and the violence of war, through film and TV, of an epic nature,” he continues. “And I thought ‘How do I make this the most intimate piece possible?’ So we never hear a gunshot, we never see a weapon, we never see the carnage. And almost all of the pieces are direct address.”

Lichte and Rothstein are American citizens, and they’re looking forward to seeing how All Is Calm will be received in Canada—where, they both agree, there is a deeper and more enduring connection to the horror of the trenches. And Lichte, at least, hopes that their creation will go on to have a long life in his second home.

“In choral music, you are going to do a Christmas show every year—and in many ways this show has given me a new perspective as to why,” he explains. “What is the message of Christmas? What is the potential power of that message? How can it transform people in real-life terms? I think this show offers a wonderful glimpse into that fleeting moment, and then puts it back out there to the audience and says ‘Now that you know this is possible, what are you going to do?’ And I think that’s a really lovely thing to give to people at this time of year.”

All Is Calm: The Christmas Truce of 1914 runs at the Vancouver Playhouse from Friday to Sunday (December 19 to 21).