directed by Tom Burmester

Cast for the American Premiere:

DOC, 22, a Healer...Albert Meijer

BILL, 26, a soldier...Emeka Nnadi

BETH, 29, a Blackhawk Pilot...Emily Rose

ELLEN, 22, a young mother...Morgan Early

ANGEL, a student...Carly Reeves

ANDY, 24, a soldier...Eric Ancker

GRACER, 37, a therapist...Carrie Bradac

MARTIN, 33, a nurse...Spencer Nicholas

IRAQI WOMAN, 22...Lauren Eckstrom

Original Cast (World Premiere) :

DOC, 22, a Healer....Alber Meijer

IRAQI WOMAN, 22....Jill Winternitz

BETH, 28, a Blackhawk Pilot....Nicole Reding

BILL, 25, a Marine....Brian Norris

ELLEN, 22, a young mother....Meredith Hines

ROSE, 21, admin assistant...Whitney Kaufman

ANGEL, 18, a student....Lauren Eckstrom

DEVYN, 17, an artist....Michael Lovan

BRINA, 25, a sales associate...Rebecca Davis

 

Based on the true accounts of wounded soldiers returning home from this generation’s controversial war, Wounded follows the lives of 4 young veterans’ and their families’ quest for reconciliation in a world of turmoil. Set in the Fisher House rehabilitation home at a high profile US Army hospital, these men and women discover that their real battle is about to begin.

 

From the Program
Wounded is the result of months of research, interviews, improvisation, transcriptions, rewrites, hard cuts, revelations, philosophical and political conversations, and the constant search for a good place to rehearse. The project began back in February 2005 when we first conceived the idea of creating a piece of theatre from the lives and stories of wounded soldiers. It seemed like an appropriate concept given current world events and the theme for our first season which has been an exploration of the “overlooked.” At the time, the Iraq War death toll was getting lots of press - a sort of reverse countdown, working its way up to 2000, but there was very little attention being payed to the escalating number of wounded soldiers coming home from Iraq or to the seriousness of their wounds.
We realized right away that there was the potential for some pretty amazing stories if only we could find some vets who would be willing to talk to us, so committed to the project without any assurances that we would find the kind of interviews we needed, and spent the next couple of months fruitlessly navigating through military bureaucracy, seeking permission to enter Walter Reed Medical Center in Washington DC. Walter Reed is the main point of entry for wounded soldiers, sailors, and Marines returning from Iraq or Afghanistan, and is considered to be one of the top Army hospitals with one of the best facilities for amputees. If we wanted our project to have any authority and authenticity we were going to have to find a way to get in to Walter Reed, but the bureaucracy was turning into a maze that wasn’t leading anywhere. We were about to give up on Walter Reed and settle for local VA hospitals when we stumbled on a back door into the hospital: The Fisher House Foundation.

The Fisher House Foundation is a hybrid military and private non-profit organization that maintains rehabilitation homes on or near military hospitals for the purpose of helping wounded vets speed their recovery by providing a temporary home for the vets and their families. The Fisher House organization believes that a vet who has been wounded in battle will recover more rapidly and completely if they are surrounded by their loved ones during their recovery period. They also address some of the invisible wounds that can afflict spouses or children of a vet who has been seriously wounded in battle. When the Ensemble contacted the Fisher House at Walter Reed and told them about the idea for our project, Fisher House enthusiastically invited us to come visit some of their vets, and we enthusiastically accepted. We expected to find some good “material” at the Fisher House, but were not prepared for how graphic and eye-opening the experience would be.

For many of us, the war doesn’t ever come any closer than daily headlines, or maybe inflated prices at the pump. Some of us know a friend or a distant relative who is serving in Iraq, but not many of us have immediate family and even fewer have first hand knowledge of the war. And yet we are a country at war. Its a strange thought when you consider how easily most of us move through our day to day life without ever thinking about war. Even though the Ensemble had already done extensive research on issues surrounding the war, coming face to face with the realities of the Iraq War as we discovered them at Walter Reed, forced us to confront our own moral ambiguities.
The men and women we interviewed qualified to stay at the Fisher House because the received “battlefield injuries,” and “faced imminent danger of death.” These were some of the most severely wounded soldiers, sailors, and Marines of the war, so when the Ensemble first walked into the family room to greet a couple of our interviewees, we were stunned by the undeniable reality of their wounds. - scarred stumps where there used to be legs, scarred faces with empty eye sockets, missing hands, limbs held together with metal rods. But even more startling was the overwhelming good humor of these wounded vets. They seemed almost jovial at times, joking about their wounds and throwing playful insults back and forth between Army and Marines and Navy - keeping up the rivalry.

Some of the guys we talked to had already received quite a bit of attention from the press and from various dignitaries. A couple had been visited President Bush and one soldier we spoke to was interviewed by Gary Trudeau (in fact this soldier made a guest appearance in Trudeau’s political strip Doonesbury). We also had the opportunity to interview family members who were living at the Fisher House who offered a very interesting perspective. By the time we left DC, we knew we had a play. We had only to write it.

From the beginning of this project our intention was to create theatre as an ensemble. We didn’t want to follow the tradition writer/director/actor hierarchy, and instead set out to develop Wounded organically through conversation, argument, and improvisation - and constant research. As the play began to take shape, it became clear that certain actors were gravitating towards characters with which they felt an affinity. Around mid-June we settled the actors into the roles they would be responsible for fleshing out, and that’s where the hard work started. We generated hours of videotaped improvised scenes. We poured over the scenes and argued about what worked and what didn’t and then recreated the scene or cut it. Ultimately we ended up with about four hours worth of “good” transcripts, and it fell on my shoulders to edit and rewrite down to 75 minutes (the length of our time slot in our Edinburgh venue).

We have since held two workshop performances - one in Southern California and one in Northern California - where we had the opportunity to interact with our audience and receive valuable feedback which we have used to refine our show for it’s World Premiere in Edinburgh. What we have discovered is that American audiences consider the play politically “balanced” - a fair representations of both sides of the moral debate surrounding the ethics of war. It has been our goal from the start of this project not to get too bogged down in the politics of the War and instead to focus on the human stories and the ethical choices faced by individuals who are confronted by war. None the less, several of our supporters have warned us that what may be middle ground in the US will seem far to the Right in the UK, and that we may discover that a UK audience will find this play far too generous in its justifications for war. For a brief moment, the Ensemble considered shifting the tone of the play to the Left by strengthening the anti-war argument, but ultimately decided that we would be cheating our UK audience if we did. We are an American theatre ensemble, holding a mirror up to an American society. What we bring to Edinburgh with WOUNDED is a realistic glimpse of the American psyche as it grapples with issues of war, security, and morality.