Soldiers on the front lines of combat are much more in contact with the world beyond the battlefield now than they’ve probably ever been at any other point in history. The technology that brings them an their concerns to US civilians appears in deceptively high resolution. Any video screen, any scrap of mail or email still doesn’t illustrate the difficulties of life in war quite as vividly as stories spoken in person by people who have seen combat. UW-Whitewater attempts to tap into the drama of modern war with Letters Home.
The stories of modern US Soldiers serving in Iraq and Afghanistan as UW-Whitewater presents Letters Home…a series of letters performed as monologues performed by ten actors. The play, which was inspired by a series of articles in the New York Times and a subsequent HBO documentary, uses few props and minimal set. Images and video taken from soldiers’ blogs on Myspace and Facebook are projected behind the actors to add a sense of setting and mood, but by and large this is ten people delivering the heart and soul of the men and women of the US Military. This could be very powerful and very, very interesting. It runs for one night onlytonight.
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The UW-Whitewater Theatre Department presents Letters Home tonight at 7:30 pm at the Young Auditorium.
