Play Summary:
It's 1973, Americans are fighting in Vietnam, and "Dear Abby" has organized a Valentine card drive for all the troops away from home. Eddie wants to deliver all the mail by Valentines Day, but then there is a tragic accident. Through a series of connected monologues, four people tell their side of the story. This play is about the
way war affects people wherever they are, and about how each one may be required
to face a peculiar kind of enemy.
Play Detail:
EDDIE delivers mail to soldiers in the jungles of Vietnam. It is hazardous duty jumping out of a helicopter, especially with all the snipers waiting below, but he keeps re-enlisting. The irony is, he?s totally against the war. The tragedy is that there is one particular death that he can?t shake. It may have been his fault. SARAH'S boyfriend takes on a special assignment so he can cut his tour of duty. But then he is killed and found holding the gift she sent him. It may be what put him in danger. The saddest thing is that she never told him about the baby. Now all she has left is guilt. ANDY wants to be an actor. He lands a job as a tassel boy for a famous stripper. He marries the perfect co-star. Then he gets drafted and, after thirteen months of terror, decides to kill himself. The hitch is that no one will help him die that way. STUBBY realizes he's waited too long to share his best memory with his son, because the boy is missing in action. The only thing he can do now is to deliver a package to some stranger clear across the country. It's the one thing his son couldn?t deliver himself.
And it may mean everything to someone else.
About the Author:
PAMELA TURNER is a playwright and director with credits in the United States,
Europe, and the Pacific. Among her most recent plays are Voices Deux, produced for
the 2007 New Plays Festival, Theatre Decatur, Atlanta; Cosmeticos, part of the 2006
Adult Xperimental Puppetry series at the Center for Puppetry Arts, Atlanta; Funny
Valentine, produced in 2004 at Seven Stages Theatre, Atlanta, and selected for the
2004 Piccolo Spoleto Festival USA; The Lady and the Poet, selected for the 2003
Piccolo Spoleto Festival USA, and produced by Theatre Gael, Atlanta, in 1994 and
again in 2003; Valentines Day, produced in 2001 by Pulse Theatre Ensemble, NYC, and in 1998 by barking dog Theatre, Atlanta, and published in the play collection Bind
Them Continually…; GirlChild III, produced in 1998 at the 14th Street Playhouse,
Atlanta, and included in the 1999 Atlanta Fringe Festival at 7 Stages Theatre; Voices,
performed as part of the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, and in 1997, presented at the 4th
International Women Playwrights conference in Galway, Ireland; and Rebecca, produced for tour by the Academy Theatre, Atlanta, in 1995.
Current projects include
Frijoles on the Side, a youth play commissioned in 2006 by Fly-By Theatre, Atlanta;
Burning Man, selected for the 2006 Stage 3 Theatre Company’s Festival of New Plays,
Sonora, California; Voices Deux, selected for a staged reading at the 2002 Edward
Albee Last Frontier Theatre Conference and the 2007 Festival of New Plays, Theatre
Decatur, Atlanta; and Magik!, presented as a staged reading in Theatre Emory’s Brave
New Works II, as part of the opening for the Schwartz Center for Performing Arts.
GirlChild III is the basis for a video/installation production with AngelWorks.sma
under the title Girlchild Undone.
Pamela was the featured playwright in the November
2004 issue of Insights for Playwrights and was the selected writer for the inaugural
reading series Playwrights And… sponsored by Poets and Writers Magazine Her
other published works include “Women and Their Language”, a chapter in Hélène
Cixous: Critical Impressions (Gordon and Breach, 1999) and a series of articles
featured in ShowGuide magazine for which she became Editor in 2006. Play awards
include the 2001 Porter Fleming Award (1stplace) for The Further Adventures of
Louise Heavingbodice and (2nd place) for Valentines Day. The Sound of Angel Wings
was a finalist for the 2001 Paul Green Playwrights Prize and also won a 2000 Porter
Fleming Award (3rd place). Burning Man was a semi-finalist for both the 2006
PlayLabs at The Playwrights Center, Minneapolis, and the 2006 SheWRITES
competition, Synchronicity Theatre, Atlanta. Male Man was a finalist for the 2004
Heideman Award. Pamela is the Director of Theatre and Film at Ben Franklin
Academy, Atlanta, and the Artistic Director of multiShades•atlanta. She is also a
Regional Rep for The Dramatists Guild of America and the Producer of PlayWorks
2000, a new plays program for the Association of Theatre in Higher Education.
Pamela
is a member of The Dramatists Guild of America, Inc.; the Atlanta Coalition of
Performing Arts; Working Title Playwrights; Independent Media Artists of Georgia etc;
and Georgia Writers.
Click here to request a copy of Funny Valentine