Join us in honoring the courage and sacrifice of our veterans with these essential reads! Our Veterans Day picks offer inspiring glimpses into the lives of those who served.
Musicals
The Andrews Brothers; Written and Created by Roger Bean
Photo by Tracey Roman, 2020 International City Theatre production
A USO performance from the Andrews Sisters is in jeopardy of cancellation when they fail to appear shortly before curtain. Thankfully, three earnest stagehands are determined to go on with the show! The Andrews Brothers is filled to the brim with 30 songs made famous by The Andrews Sisters and other top artists of the era, including the showstoppers “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy,” “Don’t Sit Under the Apple Tree,” “Three Little Sisters,” and “Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate the Positive.” Mistaken identities and madcap adventures—imagine Bing Crosby and Bob Hope in a road movie of Some Like It Hot—along with the music of an entire generation highlight this wonderful valentine to the heroes of World War II.
The Pin-Up Girls by James Hindman and Jeffrey Lodin
From The Andrew Sisters to hip-hop! From World War I to Afghanistan. The Pin-Up Girls sing a cavalcade of hits inspired by letters home from our troops overseas! While singing at their local VFW hall, Leanne and her friends stumble upon a huge stash of letters that go back a hundred years. Inspired by what they find— funny, romantic, heartbreaking, and… sexy— the ladies put on a show that celebrates the guys and gals who fight to defend our country.
Plays
Fifth of July by
The scene is a sprawling farmhouse in rural Missouri, which is home to Ken, a legless Vietnam veteran, and his lover, Jed, a horticulturist. They are visited by Ken’s sister, June, and her teenage daughter, and by Gwen and John—the former a hard-drinking, pill-popping heiress who aspires to be a rock star, the latter her wary-eyed husband and manager. All are old friends from college days, and former activists who agitated for what they hoped would be a better world. The action centers on Gwen’s offer to buy the farm, which she plans to convert into a recording center, and on Ken’s Aunt Sally, who has come to the family homestead to scatter the ashes of her late husband. Their talk, as the play progresses, is sharp and funny and, in the final essence, deeply revealing of lost hopes and dreams and of the bitterness that must be fought back if one is to perceive the good that life can offer.
Booby Trap
Photo by Dahlia Katz, 2017 Studio 180 Theatre/Harold Green Jewish Theatre Production
In the near future, an American soldier sits in a combat zone, trapped by a land mine. As he waits to see what will happen to him, scenes from his past, present, and future unfold around him.
Beyond Glory by Stephen Lang, from the book by Larry Smith
2005 Goodman Theatre production
In Stephen Lang’s theatrical adaptation of Larry Smith’s book Beyond Glory: Medal of Honor Heroes in Their Own Words, Lang presents the stories of eight veterans from World War II, Korea, and Vietnam, rendering firsthand accounts of the actions which resulted in each of them receiving the nation’s highest military award, the Medal of Honor. BEYOND GLORY gathers these men together in the present to look back on the defining moments of their lives and to examine the meaning of courage, duty, and, ultimately, humility.
Elliot, a Soldier’s Fugue by
Photo by Genaro Molina, 2018 Kirk Douglas Theatre Production
Tracing the legacy of war through three generations of a Puerto Rican family, the play focuses on nineteen-year-old Elliot, a recently anointed hometown hero who returns from Iraq with a leg injury and a difficult question: Will he go back to war a second time? While on leave, Elliot learns the stories of his father and grandfather who served in Korea and Vietnam before him.
Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo by
Photo by Richard Perry, 2011 Broadway production
The lives of two American Marines and an Iraqi translator are forever changed by an encounter with a quick-witted tiger who haunts the streets of war-torn Baghdad attempting to find meaning, forgiveness, and redemption amidst the city’s ruins. Rajiv Joseph’s groundbreaking new American play explores both the power and the perils of human nature.
If All the Sky Were Paper by Andrew Carroll
Photo by Doug Gifford, 2018 Chapman University production
After bestselling author Andrew Carroll found a riveting, heartfelt letter written by a distant cousin deployed as a pilot in World War II, he embarked on a trip to all fifty states and to more than thirty countries across the globe, including two active war zones, in search of more wartime correspondences. The letters and emails he found—by combat troops, medics, nurses, and chaplains, as well as family members on the home front and civilians caught in the crossfire of battle—came to represent to Carroll the “world’s great undiscovered literature.” They weren’t just about warfare, he realized, they were about the human condition itself—love and longing, courage and resilience, grief and hope, compassion and mercy, and, ultimately, reconciliation. Carroll’s journey, which is at times harrowing but also humorous, creates the narrative arc of the show. Already performed in high schools and colleges, community theatres, and major venues, including the Kirk Douglas Theatre in Los Angeles and the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., across the country, If All the Sky Were Paper is a play that is both timely and timeless.
