REVIEW: 'Lonely Soldiers: Women at War in Iraq,' gets a combustible staging at History Theatre
Star Tribune
by Rohan Preston
March 18, 2014
A soldier yells “Incoming!” then dives to safety. Lights blink on and off as the boom of an exploding mortar round rocks the theater. Eerie, held-breath silence follows as soldiers pat themselves to make sure arms and legs are still there.
Still in one physical piece, even as their insides are fractured, they resume their activities.
Explosions, gunshots and martial noise define “Lonely Soldiers: Women at War in Iraq,” Helen Benedict’s combustible play that opened Sunday at St. Paul’s History Theatre. Directed as an immersive, gut-wrenching experience by Austene Van — the soldiers enter through the aisles and Martin Gwinup’s sound score is often overwhelming — “Lonely Soldiers”
is about the impact of war on female fighters in Iraq.
Like black Americans who battled fascism abroad only to return to injustice at home during the world wars, the women warriors in Iraq fought two battles at once: one against insurgents who wanted them dead, and another against the sexism and misogyny of the men who supposedly had their backs.
“There are only three things the guys let you be if you’re a girl in the military,” Maria (Meghan Kreidler) tells us. “You’re a bitch if you won’t sleep with them, a ho if you’ve even got one boyfriend and a dyke if they don’t like you.”
A throttling, 90-minute one-act, Van’s production is a series of testimonies about the women’s experiences. Before enlisting, Sgt. Terris Dewalt-Johnson (Jamecia Bennett) lived in violence-plagued Washington, D.C. Enlisting offered an escape, and a chance to see the world.
Drill Sgt. Santiaga Flores (Rhiana Yazzie) was forced to marry a man who raped her when she was a teenager, and he continued to abuse her. The army was her escape. Sylvia Gonzalez (Hope Cervantes) grew up in small-town Wisconsin, where serving in the armed forces is just about the best thing a citizen can do. She wanted to serve her country.
All the women — there are seven in all — have their dreams shattered in Iraq, a place where they saw unspeakable things. Miriam Ruffalo (Dawn Brodey) leaves after she is sexually assaulted.
The acting company, rounded out by Shana Berg, Tamara Clark and Santino Craven, delivers the power and pain of their characters compellingly. They raise their voices to command us and sometimes go quiet to draw us in.
Craven, the only man in the production, plays all the male characters, from tender father to drunken victimizer to stern commander.
Sometimes, the theater is about character development or entertainment. Sometimes, it transports us to imaginative places. “Lonely Soldiers” is a production about the urgent need to listen to women warriors whose scars remain open and whose battles continue long after their guns have been silenced.
ARTICLE: Military women's extra trauma: combat stress and sexual assault
MinnPost
By Ellen J. Kennedy
March 12, 2014
More than 280,000 women have served in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2001. These women, like all military personnel, have been involved in a range of capacities, from desk jobs to active engagement in firefights. Women made up 67 of the nearly 3,500 Americans lost in hostile fire in Iraq and 33 of the 1,700-plus killed in combat in Afghanistan; more than 600 other women in Iraq and 300 in Afghanistan were wounded.
A recent study found that more than half of the women serving in the U.S. Army in those locations experienced combat-related trauma. Like their male counterparts, women veterans returned to their lives at home scarred from their experiences in war: exposure to enemy artillery and rockets and seeing others wounded and killed.
But women in the U.S. military are experiencing another form of war-related trauma: that of being victimized sexually in what is labeled Military Sexual Trauma, MST.
Significant incidences of PTSD
MST is defined by the Department of Veterans Affairs as “experiences of sexual assault or repeated, threatening sexual harassment that a veteran experienced during his or her military service.” A report in the New York Times in March, 2007, which surveyed women soldiers' experience in Iraq, showed that they had significant incidences of post-traumatic stress disorder from the combination of combat stress and sexual assault.
According to a 2011 Newsweekreport, women are more likely to be assaulted by a fellow soldier than killed in combat. The Department of Defense estimates there are about 19,000 sexual assaults in the military per year, but according to the latest Pentagon statistics (2013), only 1,108 troops filed for an investigation during the most recent yearly reporting period and during that period, only 575 cases were processed. No outside audit has been conducted of the military's numbers. Of the cases processed, only 96 went to court-martial. That means that less than .005 percent of the assaults resulted in court-martial. This is shocking and illustrates at least three grave problems.
First, women are subjected to sexual predation in the military as in other settings. However, sexual assault in combat settings such as in Iraq and Afghanistan seriously jeopardizes women’s safety and exacerbates already-grave physical and psychological stress. Second, the rate of investigation and prosecution is very low. The fact is that many perpetrators of assaults are typically of higher rank and can easily coerce and intimidate their victims into silence. Third, most veteran services have historically been designed and delivered for men because the proportion of women in the military has been much lower. This suggests that programs to address the unique needs of women are much less widely available than similar services for men.
'Lonely Soldiers' explores the issues
These issues are explored in a deeply-moving play at the History Theatre, 30 East Tenth Street, St. Paul, titled "Lonely Soldiers: Women at War in Iraq." The play runs from March 16 to April 6, with a special workshop by World Without Genocide on Saturday, March 22, titled “Women in War: Exploring Issues of Sexual Harassment, Violence, and Trauma.” Speakers will address laws of war and laws to prosecute military perpetrators; types of services available to women with MST; and the recent UN resolution 1325 to involve women in post-conflict settings.
(Registration is required by March 20. The workshop is open to the public; fees are $40 public, $25 students, $80 for those seeking 2.5 Standard CLE credits. Fees include the workshop, lunch, and a matinee performance of the play.)
Ellen J. Kennedy, Ph.D., is the executive director of World Without Genocide at William Mitchell College of Law.
ARTICLE: Wartime Confessions: First-person accounts tell true stories from the battlefield and the barracks
Mpls St Paul - Best of the Twin Cities
by William Randall Beard
March 14, 2014
War is hell, and the History Theatre explores what that hell looks like up-close with two plays built around first-person accounts of combat and military life.
The Things They Carried is a one-man performance of Tim O’Brien’s novel about the American experience in Vietnam. In 1968, O’Brien was a Macalester graduate on his way to Harvard. Then he was drafted. He fled to Canada but returned. “I was a coward; I went to war,” he writes in his book.
“Jim Stowell got the rights to adapt the book and brought me a draft, which I loved,” says artistic director Ron Peluso. The play describes O’Brien’s horrific experiences but comes full circle when he brings his daughter to Vietnam to explain it to her.
As much as Peluso liked that script, he craved other points of view. “Looking at the season, it seemed awfully male, so I searched the Internet and found Helen Benedict’s play, which is powerful and timely.”
In Lonely Soldiers: Women at War in Iraq, Benedict casts the true stories of eight women, told in their own words, into an evening of monologues and interactions. They describe combat experiences and, just as bad, the sexual harassment they endured.
“These are contrasting views of how we send youth off to war,” Peluso says of the two plays, which are running in rep.
“Being a kid of the 1960s, I had a draft number. It was a very different time. I doubt we would have been in Iraq if there were a draft and we were sending off college kids. The contrasts are what make the pairing interesting.” March 15–April 6. History Theatre, 30 E. 10th St., St. Paul, 651-292-4323, historytheatre.com
REVIEW: A rare, sweet tale about a boy's brushes with fame takes second place to national politics
by Graydon Royce
Star Tribune
Feburary 3, 2014
Ron Rabinovitz really did live a charmed childhood, thanks to a politically connected dad who happened to be a Brooklyn Dodgers fan. In conversation, Rabinovitz’s story sounds unreal — about how he became Jackie Robinson’s pen pal, and how he used to run peanut-butter sandwiches and clam chowder for Sen. John Kennedy.
As happens, though, with many well-intentioned efforts to dramatize a story that plays best in mental images, “The Incredible Season of Ronnie Rabinovitz” does not take flight. The production that premiered Saturday at History Theatre in St. Paul twists the ethereal zest of Rabinovitz’s story into a kitchen-sink drama about midcentury politics.
Playwright Eric Simonson does yeoman’s work, crowbarring the two most extraordinary people in young Ronnie’s life into the same modern living room — a sleek, stone and timbered set design perfectly pitched for the era by Rick Polenek. Director Ron Peluso seamlessly paces scenes that alternate between Robinson and Kennedy spending separate evenings with the Rabinovitzes. And a fine cast — notably Mark Benninghofen as Ron’s father, David Rabinovitz, Ansa Akyea as Robinson and Peter Middlecamp as Kennedy — throw themselves into the telling.
However, despite having young Ronnie (Jack Alexander) occasionally step out of time to comment on his remarkable childhood friends, this main character becomes more of a spectator in his own story.
In his Sheboygan, Wis., home, Ronnie watches Robinson argue with David Rabinovitz, an attorney and political operative, about the Democratic Party’s fraught embrace of civil rights in 1960. By working for Kennedy in the Wisconsin primary, Rabinovitz is damaging Hubert Humphrey, whom Robinson prefers. Middlecamp turns on the Kennedy charm even while expressing frustration about Robinson’s political bent (Jackie eventually supported Nixon in 1960).
In fact, Simonson’s finest moment is a man-to-man talk between Robinson and Kennedy. Akyea finds the core of Robinson’s frustration over class, privilege and slick politics. To Robinson, Kennedy was a rich kid from Massachusetts accustomed to getting his way. Robinson, a civil-rights pioneer, was irritated by the assumption that he would fall in line with Kennedy.
One story element that hangs behind the plot involves racist graffiti being spray-painted on David Rabinovitz’s law office. This allows Simonson to inject some Wisconsin color, as a sheriff (E.J. Subkoviak) and a roughneck labor activist (Jim Stowell) stop by the house. Stowell, in particular, spices up the drama, railing against Benninghofen’s Rabinovitz for his handling of a strike against Kohler Industries.
There is something commendable about History Theatre’s desire to ruminate on two of the great personalities of America’s changing society, circa 1960. Given how rare and sweet Ron Rabinovitz’s story is, the details defy the stage’s ability to do it justice. However, in the bargain we are left with one more glance back at the baby boomer’s favorite decade.
REVIEW: 'The Incredible Season of Ronnie Rabinovitz' at the History Theatre
by Jill Schafer
Cherry and Spoon
February 2, 2014
This really is an incredible true story. In 1960, a 15-year-old Wisconsin boy was friends with both Jackie Robinson, who broke major league baseball's color barrier, and the 35th American President John F. Kennedy. One would think that this was a story made up to create a great play, except that it's true. Ronnie Rabinovitz met JFK through his father, a prominent lawyer in Sheboygan who worked on Kennedy's campaign in the 1960 presidential primary. Ronnie also wrote fan letters to Jackie Robinson, who responded, leading to a lifelong pen-pal relationship that included telephone conversations and in-person meetings. When the History Theatre's Artistic Director Ron Peluso heard this story, he commissioned Midwest playwright Eric Simonson to write a play about it, which was presented as part of last year's "Raw Stages" new works festival. The Incredible Season of Ronnie Rabinovitz is now being presented with a full production at the History Theatre's downtown St. Paul stage. It's a really engaging and entertaining look at baseball, politics, and civil rights through the eyes of one precocious teenager.
There's lots of fourth wall breaking in this play, with Ronnie beginning the play talking directly to the audience and acknowledging that this is a play in which he's telling his remarkable story, and breaking into the action several times to explain things to the audience. It's quite a clever and effective device, a great way to relax and engage the audience. The action of the play flashes back and forth between two evenings when the two Jacks are in the Rabinovitz home on separate occasions. Kennedy wants Robinson's support in the election, and asks Ronnie's father to talk to him about it. But Robinson supports Humphrey first, Nixon second, and won't be budged. A scene showing the meeting of the two men explains why. Already retired from baseball in 1960, Jackie was active in Civil Rights, and his visit to Wisconsin prompts racist graffiti that seems to upset Ronnie's father more than it does Jackie.
The strong cast begins with the adorable and exuberant Jack Alexander as Ronnie. Mark Benninghofen is great as always as his father, and Teri Park Brown provides much of the comic relief as his mother. Peter Middlecamp plays JFK with the suave charm a Kennedy requires, and Ansa Akyea is comfortable in the role of Jackie Robinson, which he also played in Children's Theatre Company's Jackie and Me last year. Rounding out the cast are E.J Subkoviak with an amusing turn as the sheriff, and Jim Stowell as a frustrated striker.
The very cool set (by Rick Polenek) looks like it's from a 1960s TV show. But not with the harsh realism of Mad Men, more like the nostalgia-tinged sitcoms from the era. Picture Rob and Laura Petrie's living room, in color. In fact that sums up tone of the play as well, it's a little like a 1960s sitcom, with the precocious child, the hard-working, stern, slightly comic father, and the apron-wearing mother making her husband drinks and hors d'ouevres. It just so happens that into this sitcom wander two of the most famous Americans of the 20th Century. The play includes many amusing local references (cheese curds!), although I couldn't figure out why Wisconsonites would be Atlanta Braves fans, until I discovered that they were the Milwaukee Braves until 1965, and the Brewers didn't arrive until 1970.
The Incredible Season of Ronnie Rabinovitz is the History Theatre doing what it does best - presenting an entertaining and informative new play about a moment in Minnesota (er, Wisconsin) history that has larger implications to American history. It's an entertaining, engaging, nostalgic look back at the extraordinary friendships of one ordinary youngster. Playing through February 23, with discount tickets available on Goldstar.com.