Is the work ever finished?

We open on Friday and this morning I finished my last book "write me home: a red cross woman in Vietnam".

Like the first hand accounts I read, I am eager to tell our ensemble's story with A PIECE OF MY HEART. So no, the work continues. There is always room for improvement, growth and more stories to tell!

Source Material

My Dad sent me an email last week saying:

"A few years ago I bought and read a book written by an Australian woman who served with the Australian Military at a hospital in Vietnam during the Vietnam War. FYI: A lot of people don't know but our allies from Australia and South Korea sent troops, along with the Americans, to fight alongside the South Vietnamese. I believe the name of the book is "Write Home for Me: A Red Cross Woman in Vietnam" [by Jean Debelle Lamrnsdorf]. It is somewhere in the basement. Let me know if you would like me to mail it to you. I met the author at the Chadds Ford Days Fair [my hometown county fair]. A very personable lady."

So Dad mailed it and I received it and it got me thinking about the amount of source material I have read for this production. I always do research for a play but this is the first time I have directed a play that is based on a war and a story, that there were women who served in Vietnam, that not many people know .

The first book I picked up and read was in a second hand bookstore, Reed's Books, in Birmingham Alabama. The book was called "The Soldiers Story" by Ron Steinman, when I showed my producers my great find, Maria did a quick google search and it turns out Ron Steinman also wrote, "Women In Vietnam: The Oral History." So I immediately ordered that online and read it.

After that I had to read the book that the play is based on (and shares the same title), "A Piece of My Heart" by Keith Walker. Its subtitle is, "The Stories of 26 American Women Who Served in Vietnam". Reading this book helped solidify the play. I already had a sense of the history of the Vietnam War and had pretty much memorized all the lines from the play (a weird director tic that I possess) so I started reading and underlining every line that related to the play. It was interesting to see which real life person is most closely related to one of the six characters in the play. I then passed the book out to the cast to read.

Susan O'Neill was an Army Nurse for a year in Vietnam and she spoke to my actors about her experiences and gave us a copy of her book, "Don't Mean Nothing: Short Stories of Vietnam". Even though the stories are fiction, I know that a lot of what is written is true because I had read similar accounts in other source material.

Today I am going to start reading "Write Home for Me: A Red Cross Woman in Vietnam" because even though A Piece of My Heart opens in three weeks I can't stop reading these firsthand accounts.

Run-thru

We had our first run-thru, in roughly two weeks, last Sunday and it went really well!!

The actors are 85% off book, which is unbelievable because the play is 124 pages long. They are doing some really beautiful work now that they don't have to think about blocking, lines, and tracking props because everything is starting to looking really organic and natural.

Our sound-scape designer Bronwen Mullin was there and it was fantastic to talk to her between acts about what each moment feels like. Yu-Han Huang, our set-designer, was also at the run-thru to get a better idea of how the actors are moving thru her set.

Tonight's rehearsal will consist of cleaning up moments and working out the shadow moments that will be acted out upstage of the backdrop while a character is retelling the story downstage.

my model

My set designer Yu-Han is a genius!!

Not only is she insanely talented, brilliant, and my personal solution-fixer, etc. She also built me a model to scale!! I love it! It has made envisioning this epic play easier and made it feel more manageable.

Tonight's rehearsal more of act 2 as seen in the model

Getting on our feet

I started doing the pre-blocking for the show after a few rehearsals. Now the entire play is blocked and we are now working on moments!

It's great seeing the actors on their feet and getting more comfortable with the movements and the script!

I am excited for tonight's rehearsal where we will be focusing primarily on Act 2.

Please Help.

An estimated 7,484 Women (6,250 of whom were nurses) served in Vietnam.

10 to 24% left the profession when they returned.
Up to 48% sought mental health counseling. Many others chose to fight their personal battles alone.

These are simple statistics from a time long since past. But numbers are just numbers without the stories that make them real. "A Piece of My Heart," which we are producing in November over Veteran's Day weekend, strives to bring these stories to light. It recounts the journeys of six women who survived the war, only to be left to fight their own battles at home. We at Infinite Variety Productions do not think it is enough for you to hear their story, we hope to help you experience it. With performance and multimedia, our audience will travel with these characters and join them in their struggles. We have a team, a goal, and spaces in mind. Now we need your help to bring our plan to fruition.

These stories are important. If we do not remember them, we cannot stop them from happening again. Veterans make up approximately 25% of our nation's homeless adults. Nationwide, about 130,000 ex-servicemen and women do not have anywhere to live. Organizations, including non-profit groups assisting the homeless, believe the figure is much higher.

It is up to us to prevent history from repeating itself. Listen, Learn, React.