The Adobe Theater Announces Next Online Production, REUNION

The Adobe Theater is continuing its online season of new and original plays by local playwrights with REUNION, a play honoring combat nurses from the Viet Nam war.

Reunion is written and directed by Pete Parkin. Performance take place Friday October 2nd and Saturday October 3rd, 7.30pm, Sunday October 4th at 2pm.

Tickets $8 at www.adobetheater.org

A group of nurses that served together in the Vietnam war agree to meet at the Women's Memorial in Washington DC after many years to reminisce and have a champagne toast to survival.

The stories were taken from actual conversations with many of these nurses over a period of time. Additional monologues were created by dramatizing stories about nurses from the Revolutionary, Civil, WWI, WWII and Korean wars. The six characters that meet in this play are composites of many different nurses.

The cast includes Debi Kierst, Lorri Oliver, Merritt C. Glover, Georgia Athearn, Denielle Johnson, Anastasia Price, Jill Novick, and Jackie Carmichael (all the way from Pasadena).

Pete Parkin says: "My inspiration came from a conversation during a summer acting class I was teaching at the college. I noticed a father and son "team" in the class. The son seemed to be very shy and his dad was really kind of helping him along. At a break one day I approached the dad and it turns out that his son had a learning disability. He was there to help him along in his first college class. l He was a man who was way older than the average college student and so we got to talking at the break on a regular basis. And as guys do, we started talking about what we did in the service. I was surprised that he had been a combat nurse in that conflict. He said there were many men in that position. At first his stories were humorous, but as he got to know me and felt comfortable the stories became more intense. I finally asked him if he was still in touch with any of his colleagues. As fate would have it there was going to be a barbecue with several of them the next weekend. I asked if he would reach out and see if any of them would be willing to talk to me as I was thinking hard about turning this into a play. Give out my phone number to any interested. From then on it was like a pyramid scheme. They liked talking and sent my contact info to others that they knew. I have to tell you that the experience was overwhelming. It took a while for me to start going through what I had. Several were person to person, most were recorded. They had no one to talk to about this who wanted to listen, and they were happy to relate to someone who would."

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