In Their Own Words

‘Letters Home’ brings deadly war to life

Zach Kenney portrays 1st Lt. Leonard Cowherd III in the Griffin Theatre production of “Letters Home,” on stage for Veterans Day Sunday at the Walton Arts

Zach Kenney portrays 1st Lt. Leonard Cowherd III in the Griffin Theatre production of “Letters Home,” on stage for Veterans Day Sunday at the Walton Arts

Friday, November 9, 2012

It’s one thing as an actor to know that the monologue you’re performing came from a real letter, from a real soldier, serving in a real war in Afghanistan or Iraq.

It’s another thing to find out after a performance that a veteran in the audience knew that soldier, knew she was killed in action, knew her family.

“So when he watched the show, it hit him like a ton of bricks,” says Bill Massolia, one of the founders of Chicago’s Griffin Theatre Co. and creator of “Letters Home,” on stage Sunday at the Walton Arts Center.

It affected the actors the same way, says Michael Bartz, a performer in the drama.

“It hits home really hard when you realize you have a tremendous responsibility to these people,” he says. “These are real people, and these are their real words. We have a responsibility to do them justice, and we take that responsibility very seriously.

“We’re giving people a voice who no longer have one.”

Massolia’s script was inspired by the New York Times op-ed article “The Things They Wrote” and the subsequent HBO documentary “Last Letters Home.” It also includes correspondence from several of Frank Schaeffer’s books, along with photos and videos gleaned from soldiers’ pages on Facebook and Myspace.

“About 90 percent of them are from men and women who came home safe and sound,” Massolia says, “although there are a sprinkling of letters from some who were killed and from families left behind. They were just beautiful pieces of writing, and we wondered what it would be like to put them up on stage as dramatic monologues.”

Even Massolia is still surprised by the way the letters resonate with viewers after the curtain comes down.

“A couple of years ago, we were in upstate New York where Fort Drum is located,” he explains by way of example. “We were brought in by the school district up there to do the production at all the high schools in the area. They wanted to use it as a stepping-off point to get a discussion going with kids in high school, because those kids all had parents or siblings in the conflict. It was an undiscussed issue, so they used the show as a starting point for a discussion about the war.

“One kid watching the show - he had dog tags around his neck - commented a lot during the talk-back.

He said, ‘You know, I really appreciated the letters from the mothers. Everybody forgets about all the people back home.’”

Whats Up, Pages 17 on 11/09/2012