By Jim Garamone DoD News, Defense Media Activity
WASHINGTON, August 28, 2015 — America sends its sons and
daughters to war, and a new play titled “I Will Wait” looks at the effect of
these deployments across the generations.
The brainchild of Amy Uptgraft, the play connects the
experiences of spouses from World War II, the Korean War, Vietnam, Desert
Storm, Afghanistan and Iraq. Uptgraft wrote the play with Gregory Stieber, who
also directed the play. It premiered July 31 in Fort Wayne, Indiana.
Uptgraft built on her experiences as an Army spouse. Her husband,
Jamie, has deployed four times so far in the course of their marriage. They
have lived the subhead used in advertising the play -- “For every one gone,
someone waits.” They live in Denver with their four children.
Uptgraft, who worked as an actress and taught theater, came
up with the idea for the play while visiting her home in Fort Wayne. “I was
sitting with Greg and a friend from college and talking about what we had been
through,” she said during an interview. “Greg said we ought to write a play.”
In the cold light of day, she said, it still sounded like a
good idea, and the two researched the subject. “The more stories you heard the
more, the more connections you saw across the generations,” she said. “This
just impacts such a huge population of people that we don’t always think about.
We obviously think about the soldier, and rightfully so. That’s where our focus
should be. But the ripple effects of war are huge, and there are just millions
of Americans who have experienced what it’s like to send soldiers to war and
welcome them home, and their lives are forever changed as well.”
World War II Spouses Remember
She started by visiting with three 92-year-old women who
waited while their husbands served in World War II. “When we sat down to talk,
they told me about where their husbands served and what they did,” Uptgraft
said. “But that was not what I wanted to hear, so I said, ‘That’s great, but
what did you do? What was life like for you? What was it like when he left?
What was it like when he came home?’
“I could tell they were so taken aback,” she continued. “But
they opened up. Seventy years later, those women still had it all right in
their hearts.”
She went on to speak with spouses of those who served in
Korea, Vietnam, Desert Storm, Afghanistan and Iraq. Characters in the play
portray spouses from each of those wars. Uptgraft and Stieber used experiences
from a number of people to write the parts for the characters. In between the
parts, actors read testimonials from spouses of the era.
After writing the play, the two decided to stage it to see
what they had. “We had no money or funding for the project,” Uptgraft said. “I
really needed to find people who I knew and trusted and knew to be very
talented artists, musicians and dancers who would be willing to do it,
potentially for free.”
She went back to her roots and contacted people she knew in
college. Stieber is the production manager with the Fort Wayne Ballet and
well-connected in the local community.
No Small Effort
This is not a small effort. The play has more than 40
characters, and the story is told with dialogue, music and dance. The cast was
excited to be a part of it, Uptgraft said. “Really, no one in the cast is
impacted by the military like I am, but they were honored to be a part of it,
and it was a really successful first run,” she added.
Through the research, Uptgraft found that the experiences
she was going through are not unique. “They are felt really by millions of
family members who send people off to war,” she said.
Uptgraft said she believes the play gets across the idea
“that we get through all this because we are together.”
“You have spouses that walked before you, and you will have
spouses that walk after you and people that walk beside you,” she said. “We get
through it together.”
The play received an “overwhelmingly positive reception,”
she said. “I was worried because I had so much invested,” she added. “My big
worry was, ‘What happens if no one cares?’ Fifteen minutes into the show and I
could hear people crying and being moved. When the play ended, people were
immediately on their feet.”
Hoping for Expansion
Now, Uptgraft said, she would like to see the play expand.
“Now that we saw it open and saw it did move people and people were very
excited and energized by it, I’m really anxious to see it grow,” she said. She
would like it to entertain and inform the general population, she said, but she
also would like to see it performed at bases and installations, incorporating
the experiences and feelings of local spouses into the mix.
An abbreviated version of “I Will Wait” will play in
Nashville next month, and it will be restaged in Fort Wayne. “I definitely feel
it has legs, and I was moved to see how much it moved people,” Uptgraft said.
“These stories don’t mean anything if there is no one to tell them to.”
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