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The war is over. Now what? What does coming home actually mean? Nearly seven hours of bare bones theater on Saturday in East Hampton aims to show that one size does not fit all when it comes to the experience of war and the challenges of trying to slip back into civilian life.
Presented as “The Way Home,” the program presents three separate war-themed theatrical experiences. The production, set up as a benefit for the Wounded Warrior Project, will be presented by The Naked Stage at the John Drew Theater of Guild Hall.
Beginning at 3 p.m., “The Way Home” will feature two play readings plus essays written by East End teenagers for the Naked Stage’s High School Monologue Challenge.
The entire program is presented in an adaptation of black box theater tradition: no sets, costumes, props or other trappings of traditional theatrical productions. Actors will read from scripts in a dramatic presentation of plays or essays, relying on the strength of language to convey the ideas and emotions of the pieces.
Opening “The Way Home” will be a reading of “A Piece of My Heart” by Shirley Lauro. The play depicts “true” stories of six fictitious women who volunteered to serve in Vietnam and who now must struggle to make sense of what happened there and in the aftermath of the war. The characters are based on real women as portrayed in the book, “A Piece of My Heart” by Keith Walker.
The award-winning play has been performed at the Manhattan Theatre Club in New York, the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, the Philadelphia Festival Theatre and other theaters around the globe. The Naked Stage presentation is directed by Toni Munna, who has directed fully staged productions of “A Piece of My Heart” for Long Island audiences.
“The play really struck a chord with me,” the director said in a recent interview. “It really had an impact on the actors and the audiences.”
“A Piece of My Heart” is a powerful portrayal of the female experience. It also portrays the scorn and contempt that met all returning soldiers after the Vietnam War was over, Ms. Munna explained. The women meet in front of “The Wall”—the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington, D.C., and recount their stories. Strangers to each other, the women served as nurses, a Red Cross worker and in U.S. Army posts.
The actors in Saturday’s reading include some she has worked with before, two former Teenie Award winners (Westhampton Beach High School graduate Christian Nilsson and Riverhead High School graduate Christina Peters) and regular Naked Stagers. The lineup includes Tanya Tavereau and Mary-Alyce Vienneau with Bonnie Grice reading stage directions.
The second play is “Pvt. Wars” by James McLure. The comedy begins at 8 p.m. and wraps up the evening. Like “A Piece of My Heart,” the play portrays three strangers who recall their life experiences after they finished fighting in Vietnam.
In this case, the three men are voluntary in-patients at a veterans hospital. The play opens in their second year of living there after leaving Vietnam. Adolescent pranks, tormenting the nurses, mischief and jokes fill up their days. Snapshots of their lives and their fears about the future and the present can be glimpsed through the laughter.
“Pvt. Wars” was presented at the Gene Frankel Theatre in Manhattan in 2007. It has been produced by community productions around the country since then. The Naked Stage production is directed by Joseph Brondo; the actors will be Joshua Perl, Shashi Balooja, and Andrew Botsford.
Sandwiched between the two plays is the High School Monologue Challenge. Beginning at 6 p.m., the Challenge features 11 monologues written by area high school students from The Ross School, East Hampton High School, Southold High School and McGann-Mercy in Riverhead. The pieces will be presented by actors, including Ms. Munna and Ms. Tavereau, or by the writers themselves.
Each piece tackles a different part of the civilian outlook on war, said Jackie Fenley, who led the student project. Ms. Fenley, Naked Stage founder/executive director Joshua Perl and volunteers Nora Ferrari, Honey Brennan and Judi Roth presented the creative writing challenge to 12 East End schools. The monologues represent the viewpoints of siblings and children left behind, portrayals of the price of freedom, the need for national unity, and other topics, Ms. Fenley said.
Raising awareness of the challenges faced by returning members of the armed forces is a large part of the point of “The Way Home,” said Mr. Perl. The program was inspired by handicapped veterans who take part in the annual Soldier Ride.
War zones are more in the news than the difficulty of reentering civilian life, he said. “The Way Home” aims to provide a window into how taking up arms for the United States plays out after the fanfare and the fighting have ended.
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