'Nam Takes A Piece of My Heart
By Cory Forsyth
A&F Associate

A Piece of My Heart, a powerful play about the experiences of American women volunteers in the Vietnam War, finished its run last weekend at the Allen Studio Theatre on Pomona's campus. The play was directed by Betty Bernhard, a Pomona College Theatre department professor whose teaching specialties include women playwrights, feminist theatre, and theatre for social change.

The play, written by Shirley Lauro, is based on Keith Walker's book, A Piece of My Heart: the Stories of 26 American Women Who Served in Vietnam. The play is based on the "true stories of some of the nearly ten thousand women who volunteered to serve as non-combatants in Vietnam," according to Bernhard, and interweaves the stories of six American women through a series of monologues and vignettes into a poignant drama that lays bare the realities and the consequences of war. It offers "a better understanding of the personal side of war, the way it affects individuals who served in all types of outfits," said cast member Susan Caplow '03. "They will definitely see that the effects of war continue long after the fighting is over, so no country should declare war unless it is ready to deal with all of the long-term consequences."

Bernhard chose the play in January 2002, over a year ago. Cast member Laura Wang '03, who played Leeann, a volunteer Army Nurse, added that it was chosen with "the suspicion that it might soon become a timely piece." Joanna Edie '03, an audience member who had a starring role in the theatre department's production of Hair last semester, said that the department "goes to significant lengths to choose a season of plays that are meaningful, diverse and appropriate to the student body." Edie believes that part of a director's responsibility is to "make a socially-conscious statement about our current social condition."

The political message of the play affected the cast members as strongly as it did the audience. Alexandra Portillo '05 said, "As the show progressed … I actually began to take on a stronger anti-war stance." She continued, "I was no longer able to distance myself because each night in rehearsals I was someone that war tore apart." Edie also noted, "The impending war is just as distant to me as Vietnam … It is so easy to de-sensitize myself from the human beings involved … [but] this play hits you over the head with it."

Preparing for and rehearsing the play also grew to be an emotionally taxing experience for the cast. In order to better understand the characters they would be playing, the cast members watched numerous Vietnam War documentaries and read books on the subject.

The cast also had the opportunity to meet with two women who served with the American Red Cross during the war and hear their stories. The rehearsal schedule consisted of a grueling three hours a day, six days a week, for the month leading up to the play's performance.

During this time the cast became so involved in its characters that several members had nightmares about Vietnam and, according to Wang, "Most of us cried countless times during or after going over certain scenes or stories." Portillo felt that this was the most intense show she had worked on, both physically and emotionally. "I personally would come back depressed from rehearsals," she noted, "because I had to delve so fully into the madness that englufed this war, and I had no way of slowly coming out of it." Caplow said of the characters, "They began melding with our real personalities."

The play itself was visually stunning, set on a multi-level stage surrounded by military netting in the intimate Allen Studio Theatre. The technical aspects of coordinating many different characters and utilizing many different props and costumes in high-energy scenes was at times quite difficult.

Melissa Budinic '06 explains, "The show was both extremely prop- and costume-intensive. Because each actor played a number of different roles in the play, small costume [changes] or prop pieces were used to distinguish between the characters … During the particularly chaotic scenes, the use of props became almost undoable, but we were able to, thankfully, pull it off well."

Edie said of the final scene, in which the actors salute a projection of names of those killed in Vietnam while John Lennon's "Imagine" plays and a single candle burns, "[It] was the most well-designed and poignantly-executed ending to a play I've seen at the Claremont Colleges, maybe anywhere … I doubt there was a dry eye in the theater."

Portillo, when asked about the message of the play, said, "This show cannot be ignored, just like this [impending war with Iraq] cannot be ignored. Out of pure human empathy, everyone is damaged from war."