'Piece of My Heart' reveals heart, scars of Vietnam's unsung female heroes

More and more in recent years, memorials to the unsung and fallen military heroes of America have graduated from the capitals to smaller towns and burgs. Memorials of precious stone or strong metals while perhaps vast and impressive are often devoid of the life and sacrifice they represent.

This Veterans Day and following weekend, ETSU’s Division of Theatre and Dance is presenting a memorial that brims with the joys, laughter, songs, sighs and sorrows of life and war in the form of playwright and author Shirley Lauro’s award-winning A Piece of My Heart.

The living memorial for stage, which debuted in New York in 1991, not only commemorates veterans of the Vietnam War, but it especially focuses on its quietest heroes -- the women who served there. Based on firsthand accounts of nurses, Red Cross workers and entertainers who volunteered to enter those distant jungles in the 1960s, the show has been praised by critics as “heart-wrenching,” “cathartic” and “a work with the music and soul of a tumultuous era.”

ETSU’s cast and crew are treating this theatrical memorial with much reverence and respect. “I am really proud to be able to tell a story that not many people know,” says sophomore theatre major Shannon Brown, who portrays the hard-core character Steele, as well as several others. “I hope a lot of veterans come to see the show and they realize that we are doing this for them.”

Educating a younger generation is part of their mission, too. “It’s especially meaningful for me,” says senior Hannah Love, whose main character is adventure-seeking Sissy, “because no one knows a whole lot about Vietnam, especially our generation, especially about the nurses. I didn’t even know there were females over there nursing.”

From a different generation, Director Bobby Funk knew there were women in Vietnam, and actually was attracted to this script because “the women’s experience in Vietnam really intrigued me,” he says.

The drama and emotion were also compelling and, as the ETSU actors say, “powerful.” “In theater, great plays are filled with struggle, and in plays about war, you often come across characters making life and death decisions,” says actor and professor Funk, whose own parents were World War II veterans who met in France. “Because of this, I am pulled into the decisions each character makes and I feel the deep emotion radiating from the decisions that are made.

“War is horrible, and if we can learn from these plays of the horror, perhaps we can learn not to repeat our mistakes from the past …”

This kaleidoscope from Vietnam is not always reverential. It is, however, always realistic. A Piece of My Heart is vintage ’60s, and reminiscent of M*A*S*H, with the nurses laughingly sharing memories of the escapism of drinking, drugs, lovemaking and delectable Coca-Cola from home.

Less delectable are the flashbacks of first days in surgery with blood spurting and body parts no longer attached to their owners or boot-camp-like training tortures. Serious moments, however, dissolve quickly into lighter moments or raucous song, such as “Oh, Lord, Won’t You Buy Me a Mercedes Benz” and “These Boots are Made for Walking.”

The music is integral to this still-vital post card from Vietnam, reviving tunes from Janis Joplin, Carole King, Tanya Tucker and Nancy Sinatra and anonymously written protest songs last sung in muggy U.S. barracks on the other side of the world.

“The music is really special,” Brown says.

“The ’60s were all about music,” chimes in Ryan Perry, who portrays all of the play’s American soldiers. “There was the Beatles, Janis Joplin … Music went into the mainstream, giving messages previously only told by poets. These musicians could put it into a song and sing it and the message would go to the masses.
“All these songs will be so recognizable.”

The indelible music of the 1960s is so essential to this show that it is often interspersed with lines. “I like that the songs fit whatever is going on in the play,” says Love, who was in Grease last season at ETSU. “It’s not like in some plays where we suddenly put our ‘jazz hands’ on.”

It’s only natural that the music and dialogue are intertwined in Piece of My Heart, says Noah Wall, who portrays Maryjo, the lead singer and musician in the play’s own band, The Sugar Candies. “Music is such an important part of any generation,” says Wall, who plays in ETSU’s Old-Time Pride Band and a professional band when not overseas with the USO. “It is a release from whatever is going on in your life. That’s what it was for the soldiers who went to USO shows and carried their radios with them.”

The music is so important, that Maryjo and the white go-go booted Sugar Candies USO band, along with special guest and nurse Martha O’Neil, portrayed by theatre freshman Chelsea Kinser, will not only entertain during the production, but also for 30 minutes before each show, Thursday through Sunday. “I really want people to come see the Sugar Candies,” says Sophomore Kelcey Werner, a theatre and PR double major. “They’re very good.”

Everything in Lauro’s memorial – music, dialogue and monologues – are straight from the record books and record albums, and that, the cast says, makes this production special.

“These are actual accounts,” Brown says.

Senior Ryan Perry, the only male in the show, nods emphatically. “So many times when you do theater, it’s fiction with no facts to it,” says Perry, who most recently performed in ETSU’s Grease and Inherit the Wind. “But this time, we’ve got the facts.”

As a result, the actors may feel a bit like they are on the proverbial emotional rollercoaster. “It’s definitely really emotional,” says Werner, who portrays Whitney in this, her second ETSU production. “We go from this really happy scene to a scene where someone is dying … but these are true stories, and it is emotional to think someone really did this, really lived this.”

Talk about rollercoaster. While Love and Werner portray a couple minor characters in addition to their main character, Brown switches between about seven vastly different characters and accents, and senior Ryan Perry has 20 characters to slip in and out of, as he portrays all the American soldiers these women encounter from the time they leave America to years after the war.

“It’s not too bad,” Perry says. “The hardest thing I have ever done is trying to love all these women at once -- for two hours. I get to kiss three of them. OK, so it’s not the hardest. It’s the most fun.

“But there is one sequence of about eight pages where I’m five different characters. Now that is challenging.”

Hopefully, the emotional and fun aspects of this memorial production will pique the audience members’ interest or open their eyes, cast members say.

“I hope people come away with a greater sense of what the Vietnam War was about,” Brown says, “and say, ‘Wow! This is what’s going on now. This is actually relevant to my life.’ ”

“I really hope a lot of people come see it so they know this really happened to people and they’re still going through it,” Love says.

“I just hope we do it justice,” Perry says.

“I hope we get it right,” says Brown.

“I think Shirley Lauro has given us everything we need to get it right,” Perry says. “We just have to put in the performance.”

This memorial will be fleeting, Thursday through Saturday at 7:30 p.m. and Sunday at 2 p.m. at ETSU’s Bud Frank Theatre in Gilbreath Hall, but no less meaningful to those who breathe life into it. They are prepared for this mission.

“I hope that the audience knows that we all have nothing but respect for the veterans, and even though the subject is controversial, we just want to tell their story, because it definitely deserves to be told,” Wall says. “I hope they go away from the show with even greater respect and compassion for the men and women who go to war for our country.”