Sunday, November 4, 3 p.m.
St. Ambrose University's Galvin Fine Arts Center, 2101 North Gaines Street, Davenport IA
Appearing as the latest guests in Quad City Arts Visiting Artists series, actors from the Griffin Theatre of Chicago will stage their acclaimed, unique military drama Letters Home at St. Ambrose University of November 4, the incisive and moving production that the Daily Herald called “a thoughtfully conceived, quietly eloquent show” that “avoids geo-politics and paints a compelling portrait of the men and women who carry out the country's political will.”
Letters Home puts the current wars in Afghanistan & Iraq front and center by bringing to life actual letters written by soldiers serving in the Middle East. Griffin Theatre's production is 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 play, without politicizing, gives audiences a powerful portrait of the soldiers' experience in the ongoing war, and the show's initial production was was nominated for a Joseph Jefferson Award for “Outstanding New Play.”
Although the title Letters Home implies that all the letters are from soldiers, the piece includes a small number of correspondences from parents, whose words prove no less important. These letters were written under the most difficult of circumstances, among them the disorientation of training, deployment, combat, separation from family and loved ones, and occupational duties in Afghanistan and Iraq. They also help define for the audience what it means to serve our country today through acts of bravery, compassion, social responsibility, and a sense of community. Taken collectively, Letters Home gives a voice to a generation that went to war against terror in Afghanistan and to war in Iraq for reasons that are still being debated and who are still fighting and dying in those wars today. More importantly, the play reveals the humanity that lies within the war as seen through the eyes of the men and women fighting it.
Letters Home will be presented in St. Ambrose's Galvin Fine Art Center at 3 p.m. on November 4, admission is $10-20, and tickets are available by calling (563)333-6251 or visiting SAU.edu/galvin. For more information on the Quad City Arts Visiting Artists program, call (309)793-1213 or visit QuadCityArts.com.
