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Bob Rector

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Letters From The Front - The Play Kindle Edition

by Bob Rector (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

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This play weaves actual war letters written from the battle front and home front dating back as far as Valley Forge into a story set during the waning days of WWII. The personal themes in the letters are honestly reflected, as is the commitment of everyday Americans to preserve freedom.

Popular essayist Katharine Hartgrove, whose son is fighting in Northern Italy, has been commissioned to write a play based on these letters. She enlists boyfriend Johnny Chastain, America's favorite radio wise guy, to assist her. He provides an unseen twist to the story, along with plenty of comic relief. When the laughter and tears subside, Johnny is the most unlikely of heroes and Katharine is healed from emotional scars that have haunted her for 20 years.

Print length

152 pages
Language

English
Sticky notes

On Kindle Scribe
Publication date

September 18, 2014
File size

2959 KB
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Editorial Reviews

Review

"A patriotic tribute to the men and women who so bravely serve." - CBS Evening News

"A wonderful show." - NBC's Today

"A tear-jerking, hand-clapping, mind-blowing stroll through history." - The Shreveport Times

From the Author

What's the difference between writing novels and writing plays? Both involve the ancient craft of storytelling. Both use words as the essential building blocks. Beyond that, well . . . Having done both, here's what a play means to me.

Standing Os. Cheers. People coming up to me and shaking my hand, saying thank you, telling me what my play meant to them. Face to face. Night after night.

We seldom get that response with our books. Perhaps at a book signing. Or when somebody writes a particularly flattering review. With my play Letters From The Front, I got it after every performance, year after year, all over the world.

I wish every writer was able to experience that. After releasing my one (and so far, only) novel Unthinkable Consequences, I've often wondered how people responded when they read it. A few have been kind enough to leave enthusiastic reviews, but that was after they'd read the entire book and had time to analyze their feelings toward the work.

It's very different with a play. The reaction is spontaneous and continuous. Night after night I sat in the dark with hundreds of others and watched and listened to their reaction while the performance was in progress. A laugh here, a tear there, a gasp, a groan, shuffling in their seats when their attention wasn't being held completely, leaning forward when it was.

Do people react that way while they read our books? No doubt they do. We're just not there to see it. Its been hard for me to get used to that.

To me Letters From The Front is summed up by a statement made by lead character Katharine Hartgrove near the end of Act I:

"To me, this play isn't about individual wars or the politics behind them or who was right or who was wrong. It's about the fragile and precious nature of life. It's about everyday people who suddenly came face to face with their own mortality, or the prospect of losing a loved one. It's about people reaching out to each other, maybe for the last time. Each of these letters was affirmation on the part of the writer that at their darkest moment they were not alone."

Couldn't have said it better myself. It's about people, what's in their hearts, who they love, how they deal with life's adversities. At the core is a conflict of massive proportions - World War II. Millions are thrown into the conflagration. But Letters From the Front focusses on just two people as they struggle to understand, adjust, put events into some sort of meaningful perspective, and discover the depth of their love for each other.

Maybe the song As Time Goes By captures the sentiment best: "It's still the same old story, a fight for love and glory."

From the Inside Flap

Inside the playbill handed out as people enter the theater there is a comment card. Over the years we've collected tens of thousands of them. Here are examples of comments from people who have seen the show.

"I was touched beyond belief. I am a better person for having seen your show."

"I have never been so deeply touched as I have been with this production. You have brought the reality of the home front to light with such clarity and tenderness."

"You broke my heart and brightened my day. Fantastic!!"

"Some of the best theater I have seen. Better than most from Boston and New York. Impressed!"

"Uniquely heartwarming, tearjerking, hits home hard. Thanks."

"At the base of every conflict is the men and women who have fought it. The wants, needs, desires, and fears never change no matter the time or place. Your group presented this in a truly memorable way. P.S. I cried about ten times."

"It was without a doubt one of the most touching and patriotic shows I have experienced. It was filled with humor, tears, laughter, sadness, and a wonderful sense of being an American."

"Hits close to home, close to the heart."

From the Back Cover

The play Letters From The Front premiered on March 6, 1991 in Atlanta, GA. Since then it has played at venues around the world, both stateside and overseas. Up until now, the script was only available on 8-1/2 x 11 3-hole punched paper, and only to those who actually worked on the show.

Now for the first time it is available to the general public in both print and eBook. This story about the WWII home front has been called "A patriotic tribute to the men and women who so bravely serve," by the CBS Evening News. NBC's Today deemed it "A wonderful show!" And the Shreveport Times said it was, "A tear-jerking, hand-clapping, mind-blowing stroll through history."

One thing's for sure, there's never been a theatrical experience quite like it. Mixed into the heartfelt narrative of a war mom and her exasperating boyfriend are actual war letters from every major American conflict dating all the way back to Valley Forge.

By the play's end we have a new definition of what the front is: a place where we come face to face with the reality that our love for one another can never be taken for granted; that ultimately it's our greatest ambition, our most precious resource, and if it dies, all is lost.

About the Author

Bob Rector has been a professional storyteller for forty years, but his background is primarily in film, video, and stage work as a writer and director. Bob was one of the pioneers of music videos, first for The Now Explosion and then for Music Connection, which were highly popular nationally syndicated shows that preceded MTV by ten years. He created over 100 films for the top musical artists of the times. Bob wrote and directed an outdoor-adventure feature film, Don't Change My World, and has won numerous awards for nature and sports documentaries. His original three-act play, Letters From the Front, entertained America's troops around the world for fifteen years and was the first theatrical production to be performed at the Pentagon. Written and directed by Rector, this show became known as the World's Most Decorated Play. After decades on the road (and in the air) Bob finally settled down long enough to write his first novel, Unthinkable Consequences.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B00NPMPGV8
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Bob Rector (September 18, 2014)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ September 18, 2014
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 2959 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
Print length ‏ : ‎ 152 pages

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Bob Rector

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Bob Rector has been a professional storyteller for forty years, but his background is primarily in film, video, and stage work as a writer and director. Bob was one of the pioneers of music videos, first for The Now Explosion and then for Music Connection, which were highly popular nationally syndicated shows that preceded MTV by ten years. He created over 100 films for the top musical artists of the times. Bob wrote and directed an outdoor-adventure feature film, Don't Change My World, and has won numerous awards for nature and sports documentaries. His original three-act play, Letters From the Front, entertained America's troops around the world for fifteen years and was the first theatrical production to be performed at the Pentagon. Written and directed by Rector, this show became known as the World's Most Decorated Play. After decades on the road (and in the air) Bob finally settled down long enough to write his first novel, Unthinkable Consequences.

~~Follow Bob on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/RectorWriter

~~Visit Bob's website at http://www.unthinkableconsequences.com/

~~Enjoy Bob's RectorWriter blog at http://rectorwriter.wordpress.com/

~~Follow Bob on Twitter at https://twitter.com/RectorWriter

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Claude Forthomme

A Unique Heart-rending Drama and Romance

Reviewed in the United States on October 13, 2014

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I read this play twice, this is how much I loved it. It is a complex play, unfolding at various level, hitting different emotional tones, from - to use the phrase of Johnny Chastain, one of the two main characters - both "crassly sensitive and crudely sincere". There are moments where you laugh and moments where you cry.

And it is emphatically not a series of letters from the front that are merely read out (though there is that too in Act II), with soldiers backstage acting out the events recounted in the letters. I have seen that concept used on TV in Europe (on ARTE) to "celebrate" or rather commemorate World War I. The formula works of course, but this play goes well beyond it and is wholly original in its approach.

Act I and Act III are all about the attempts of an established, successful writer-journalist, Katharine Hartgrove, to use a series of letters from the front to construct a play - Katharine is a woman with a heart as big as a house, she is a widow who has lost her husband in World War I, and her only son is presently fighting in Italy, at the end of World War II. To help her, there is Johnny Chastain, an actor and entertainer, temporarily retired or perhaps between two jobs, and the two are clearly in love. The two are also just at the beginning of the relationship and it is clear that it could still go either way, Katharine and Johnny are very different people, she is serious and earnest, he is a bit of a clown. No spoilers, I won't reveal what happens next, but the story is both suspenseful and satisfyingly romantic.

Yet this is not a light romance comedy, even if it looks like one at times. Bob Rector is able to move you, pulling several strings. First, the letters themselves, the stories they tell, the sincerity, the realism - and in this he needs little help, he has used real letters written by American men and women caught in various wars, from the Civil War to the first Persian Gulf war and what he has done is to choose them expertly and lay them out in Act II in an ascending order of emotions. But he doesn't stop there, it's not just a story about war veterans and their letters. Enter Katharine and Johnny. What is profoundly moving is the way the two react to each other and to the letters they read. Their love tryst is like a door opened on the human condition, and along with them, you tremble and cry, as the dialogue between the two throws a deep, probing light in the nature of love and death. As Katharine puts it, "To me, this play isn't about individual wars or the politics behind them or who was right or who was wrong...It's about everyday people who suddenly came face to face with their own mortality, or the prospect of losing a loved one. It's about people reaching out to each other, maybe for the last time."

That sums it up perfectly, it's about "reaching out to each other, maybe for the last time." And when this happens to Katharine herself, you shake and cry with her. So, be ready with your kleenex! I'm not surprised this play was so successful during the 15 years in toured the world, and my only regret is not having seen it on stage, with all the A/V components and the music that go with it. I am sure it makes for an extraordinary theater experience but even the play, as it is here, in printed words, is a pleasure to read. Highly recommended.

3 people found this helpful

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Kindle Customer49

A Unique Way of Showing Veterans

Reviewed in the United States on October 4, 2014

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Coming from a prolific letter writing family--the single-spaced, two-sided, Underwood typewriter kind--I was interested in seeing just how Bob Rector's "LETTERS FROM THE FRONT" would play out. Was it going to be simply a litany of touching soldiers' letters recited by and staged for various actors?
As it turned out, the play provided much more: It was a multi-layered theater piece that had me chuckling, gasping, `Oh no!" and more than once, producing a tear or two. Basically, it's about a well-respected journalist paired with a street smart promoter, who together, are trying to write/produce a play that will tell the stories of American soldiers to audiences, by using excerpts from letters dating from the Revolutionary War up to present day. The width and breadth of the letters were wonderful and showed such things as a longing for more communication, courage under fire, a couple of sexual references, loyalty to their families and their country, and my favorite, from a nurse during the Vietnam war, who was holding her patient while writing his mother about her dying son.
It was very interesting to see how Rector intertwined the various acts with action, dialogue, and the letters themselves. In addition, the back and forth bantering of the two lead characters was great fun as they pursued their brainstorming process, and much like the showbiz of today, creative integrity was pitted against a sell-sell-sell attitude.
This unique look at veterans from the various periods of U.S. history is well worth your time. It is a reminder of sacrifice, loyalty, devotion, and something else. To me, it was about the power of letter writing and how emailing and texting will never be its equivalent. With good, clear stage directions it is (and apparently already has been) ideal for stage production. Very recommended.

4 people found this helpful

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Lornwal

Gripping and very moving

Reviewed in the United States on April 8, 2015

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Stirring, heartrendingly poignant, and at times even funny, Bob Rector's play LETTERS FROM THE FRONT is a gripping read. It's easy to imagine how effectively the stage production would take audiences to the edges of their seats, their emotions on their sleeves.

Much of the action takes place in 1945, as a writer named Katharine, who has lost a husband to war and now has a son fighting in Italy, struggles to form a collection of letters into a stage production that will express patriotism and pride in our Armed Forces, but also show the heartbreaking cost paid by the men and women who so courageously defend our freedom.

The letters span many years and many wars, from the Revolutionary War through the VietNam War. (A portion of the play takes place in 1965.) They have a fierce hold on Katharine's emotions – and on the reader's – but less so on those of Katharine's cynical, make 'em-laugh boyfriend, Johnny, a popular radio comedian. Johnny believes it doesn't pay to be serious – he got his big break by turning a "Hamlet" soliloquy into a comic routine – but Katharine knows instinctively that his ideas for a loud, gaudy, fireworks-and-Statue-of-Liberty production are not right for her stage play. Still, she doesn't know how to present the letters effectively to an audience.

Luckily for us, Bob Rector does. And if this very moving piece sends you in search of ways to support and thank our troops and veterans, so much the better!

14 people found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

Stephen W. Douglass

Utterly Entertaining and Emotionally Stirring

Reviewed in Canada on November 21, 2014

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Utterly entertaining and emotionally stirring, Rector’s Letters From The Front has succeeded in capturing the extremes of mental anguish experienced by so many in times of war. The letters, clearly a national treasure, reveal on so many levels the trauma that war inflicts on participants and their loved ones. The reading of those letters during the play and the responses of Katharine Hartgrove and Johnny Castain, the play’s two primary characters, is the heart and soul of this masterpiece.

I recommend this play to anyone, both young and old, perhaps even those who might be slightly guilty of forgetting history, or of taking the freedom we enjoy for granted.

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Letters From The Front - The Play Kindle Edition

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