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.