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Community Corner

Joint Project Marks Veterans Day with Soldiers' Stories

The Westport Playhouse and the Westport Arts Center team up to honor veterans.

 

A Nov. 11 collaboration between the Westport Arts Center and the Westport Country Playhouse will recognize Veterans Day by using art, drama and star power to focus on U.S. soldiers in current times.

Award-winning actor Brian Dennehy will host the one-day presentation of “Letters Home,” a dramatic production of actual letters written by U.S. troops serving in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as correspondence from concerned parents of the soldiers.  The performance takes place at the Westport Country Playhouse.

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The letters selected for this production capture a wide variety of emotions. Some soldiers describe the atrocities of war, while others express their fear of mortality, the glory of survival, love of family, praise of god, compassion for those they protect, and tremendous grief over comrades who lost their lives.

"You can read every book on war there is to read, and talk to vets about their experience, but nothing can prepare you for what you see," wrote Operation Iraqi Freedom Soldier Matthew Webster.

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"Our Lieutenant, Lt. Childers, got shot in the gut in our first fight," Webster continued. "I was standing right next to him ... and it didn't look too bad at first. But he died before the medivac chopper even got there. He was the first American to die in the war. I've never seen anyone die before - especially someone as close to me as him. I don't know if I ever talked about him before, but he was probably one of the best Marines I've ever known."

"Letters Home" will be performed by the touring company of Chicago’s Griffin Theatre. Bill Massolia, the theatre's artisitc director, selected the letters included in this performance. The letters to be read in the Westport production span the beginning of the war in Afghanistan in 2001 through early 2007.

“The letters were acquired in a variety of ways,” Massolia said. “Some were pulled from books and newspapers, some I contacted families directly if I read about them in the newspaper. I sifted through about 400 letters in total to create the show. And I have constantly tried to update it as the wars both continue on and letters are still being written.”  

Griffin Theatre’s initial presentation of “Letters Home” last winter was critically acclaimed and was nominated for a Joseph Jefferson Award for “Outstanding New Play.”  

 The on-stage production will be accompanied by an art exhibition taking place in the Westport Country Playhouse lobby.  “Daily Exchanges: U.S. Soldiers in Iraq - The Ordinary in Images,” curated by Westport Art Center's Director of Visual Arts Terri C. Smith, with the assistance of artist and veteran Paul Kaiser, will feature photographs, emails, conceptual art and videos depicting the every day lives of troops in Iraq. Kaiser, a visual artist, is a Naval Lieutenant who served in Iran as an infantry and special operations veteran.

 “The exhibit will show the work of professional artists as well as from the soldiers stationed in Iraq," Smith said. "It was very important to us to include images from the soldiers as a visual parallel to the letters being read on stage. Our intent is to emphasize the every-day events of a soldier’s life —not what you see on the evening news.”

Kaiser points out the art exhibit rounds out the perception of soldiers portrayed in “Letters Home.”

“The on-stage drama delves in to the hyperbole of the tragic side of the Iraq experience,” he said. “The reality is that conceptualizing is not a zero sum; to process the misery of the war should not be done at the expense of the service member who never sees combat or does so in a limited fashion despite being trained to do so. The vast majority of the combatants spend much of their time doing things like guard duty, weight lifting, card playing, normal job duties and so on … never suffering to the degree that the play dedicates to the tragic perspective.

 “This play is important but it tells a well-tred perception and ignores the letters that are not written, the emails,” he adds. “I think it important to tell this other larger perspective that has essentially been ignored especially in the arts community, but to do so in a way that is not in conflict with the performance and in keeping with the continuity of the work being genuine, i.e. from soldiers the same as the letters. It should also be done in a way that absolutely respects the integrity of the show and the subjects.”

Images in the exhibit range from a view of a soldier’s barracks to a video showcasing political activists who knit on behalf of soldiers.

“We are using this exhibit to raise awareness of those who want to bring the soldiers home,” Smith said.

Professional artists participating in the exhibit include Steve Mumford, a professional artist who until recently was a combat artist in Iraq, as well as Westporter Spencer Platt, an award-winning photojournalist, and Kaiser.

A reception and guided tour of the art exhibit will begin at 6 p.m., followed by the performance of “Letters Home” at 7 p.m. A panel discussion moderated by Kaiser and Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist Lisa Chedekel will follow the play at approximately 9 p.m. After the discussion, Smith and Kaiser will be available for comment on the exhibition.

As a member of The Hartford Courant’s investigative team, Chedekel co-authored a series of stories in 2006 on soldiers’ mental health that led to sweeping reforms in the military’s system of screening and treating troops deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan.

 The series was a finalist for the Pulitzer in investigative reporting in 2007 and won a George Polk Award for military reporting, the Worth Bingham Prize, and the Selden Ring Award for investigative reporting.

 According to a  Westport Country Playhouse press release, “Letters Home” was inspired by the New York Times Op-Ed article, “The Things They Wrote,” and the subsequent HBO documentary, “Last Letters Home,” and additionally uses letters and correspondences from Frank Schaeffer’s books, “Voices from the Front: Letters Home from America’s Military Family,” “Faith of Our Sons” and “Keeping Faith.”  

 The art exhibition will remain on view Thursday from 1 to 6 p.m., and Friday, from noon to 6 p.m.

 Dennehy is a two-time Tony Award winner for Best Actor. He was recognized for his portrayals of James Tyrone in Eugene O'Neill's “Long Day's Journey Into Night,” and for Willy Loman in Arthur Miller's "Death of a Salesman.” The latter production was also filmed for Showtime which subsequently earned Dennehy a Golden Globe Award, a Screen Actors Guild Award and an Emmy Award nomination. He revived the role of Willy Loman in London's West End for which he received the Olivier Award for Best Actor. Dennehy also has appeared in films and television projects.

 The Playhouse’s presentation of “Letters Home” is sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts and Pitney Bowes. Tickets are $15 for the general public and $10 for veterans. For more information or tickets to “Letters Home,” call 227-4177 or 1-888-927-7529, or visit the box office at 25 Powers Court, off Route 1, Westport, or www.westportplayhouse.org. For more information about the exhibition, call the Westport Arts Center at 222-7070 or visit www.westportartscenter.org.

 

 

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