Coming to the Redfern: Letters Home

From Jackie Hooper, Redfern Arts Center:

The Redfern Arts Center at Keene State College will present Griffin Theatre Company in Letters Home, an evocative and engaging play that brings to life authentic letters written by soldiers serving in the Middle East. The play brings the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan front and center without politicizing and gives the audience a powerful portrait of the soldiers’ experiences and what it means to serve our country today.

Letters Home will be performed Wednesday, March 20, at 7:30 p.m. in the Main Theatre of the Redfern Arts Center. A performance for middle and high school students will take place the next day at 9:30 a.m. Tickets to the school performance are $10. Tickets to the evening performance are $25 for the general public; $15 for senior citizens, children, KSC alumni, faculty and staff; and $5 for KSC students. For tickets, call the Redfern Box Office at 603-358-2168 or order online at www.keene.edu/racbp.

A question and answer session will follow each performance with Griffin Theatre Company actors. Leonard and Mary Ann Cowherd of Culpeper, Va., parents of Army 2nd Lt. Leonard M. Cowherd (killed in Iraq in May 2004), whose letters are read in Letters Home, will participate in the Q&A session following the evening performance. The Cowherds were interviewed in the HBO documentary Last Letters Home, which inspired the production of Letters Home.

An exhibit of letters from Keene State students serving in World War II from the Drenan Collection will be displayed in the Redfern lobby. This exhibit is curated by the KSC Alumni Office from letters sent by soldiers to the late KSC English Professor Sprague Drenan.

For more on this program, read the full story at the keene.edu news site.