MEDIA ADVISORY
For Immediate Release
Contact: Kassie Misiewicz, Managing Artistic Director (479-200-1811; kassie@theatresquared.org)
Robert Ford, Playwright-in-Residence (479-582-4448; bob@theatresquared.org)
Arkansas Arts Council Grant Supports Development of My Father’s War
FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – TheatreSquared, Northwest Arkansas’ professional theatre company, has received a $7130 Collaborative Project Grant from the Arkansas Arts Council to support the development of My Father’s War, a new work by playwright-in-resident Robert Ford based on the experience of one young GI during World War II.
TheatreSquared’s development of the play will include feedback sessions with veterans’ organizations in Northwest Arkansas, the Butterfield Trails Village, the Omni Center for Peach and Justice, and area high schools. At the end of the collaborative development project in June 2007, TheatreSquared will perform staged readings of the play in schools and senior centers, as well as on its home stage in the Nadine Baum Studio, specifically aiming to connect high school students with senior citizens.
“This grant is a real honor. It’s vote of confidence from the Council, both in the idea of the play itself, and in the way we want to go about developing it,” Ford says. “The idea is to give people a stake in its success, especially those veterans who’ve served in combat.” My Father’s War promises to be both an appreciation of the men who fought the war and an exploration of the struggle by subsequent generations to understand the realities of it. In the play, actor Amy Herzberg will portray her father, who served in the infantry in World War II as a very young man. In a series of scenes that run the gamut from comic to hard-hitting, Herzberg’s character attempts to understand “the reality of my father’s war.”
Ford and his colleagues will develop the play via conversations with, and staged readings for, World War II veterans in Northwest Arkansas, residents of senior centers, and high school teachers. These project partners will not only help Ford craft credible and memorable material, but they will also assist in the production of reading, writing, and discussion activities that will supplement the experience of seeing the play in performance.
Ford and Herzberg are both founding company members of TheatreSquared, which produces exceptional professional theatre for youth and adult audiences. Alice Jankell, a professional director from New York, will assist in the development process at various stages.