[opening music]
[orchestral music]
[Tom Rigedly] One evening when I was at home making
dinner and the opening song for "Guys and Dolls"
got in my head out of nowhere, but
it's a catchy tune, and I just found
myself wondering what else
Frank Loesser had written. I looked them up, and
on his Wikipedia page there's about a
sentence that says, "Then, he went and
joined the army and wrote this musical
called "Hi, Yank!" for the Army."
So, I just found myself wondering what that show was.
["The Ballad of Rodger Young" playing]
[Victor Hurtado] Tom himself contacted Army Entertainment
and got a note back from Army Entertainment last February letting him know that Army Entertainment
functionally wasn't doing theater or music and theater anymore.
I, as director of Army Entertainment, had
no idea what was in our military
entertainment DNA at all.
So, I was fascinated: "Frank Loesser is part of
our DNA, Private Frank Loesser. How do we not know that?"
[Arian Moayed] When Tom Ridgely, our
artistic director of Waterwell, found that these up musical even existed,
it took some digging of libraries across
the country to be like, "You know, if you look
in that box, dig deep in there, there is one of
these original blueprints!"
We were able to find these musicals from one of the
greatest American musical writers ever.
[Rigedly] What we found was what the Army called a
"blueprint special," a kind of complete
do-it-yourself theatre kit.
It was this very thick book, documents, that had the score, the complete orchestration for fifteen-piece jazz
bands, as well as designs for costume
and scenery and suggestions for how to
construct those things out of materials
that soldiers might conceivably have at hand.
[trumpet music and singing]
[Moayed] These musicals that were commissioned by
the US Army in 1944 included work by Frank
Loesser, by Arnold M. Auerbach, by even Jose Limon,
a towering figure in modern dance history.
Everyone at Waterwell decided
that it was the best thing to do to find
them, put them together, and
find a way to give them a voice here in
New York City, and the best way to do
that was to get these lost musicals
on this aircraft carrier called the
Intrepid.
[Rigedly] We knew we were doing it in a museum, so
we knew the historicity of this
piece would be what was cool about it.
Going through a time machine, that
you'd be seeing something like what the
soldiers would have seen all those years ago.
[singing onstage]
[Hurtado] The "blueprint specials" was created
to boost the morale of the soldiers.
The shows were put together and they were
presented in bases near New York, and then
they were packaged up as blueprints.
The soldiers themselves would put them
on for their fellow soldiers. A lot of
the material is admittedly a little
subversive.
[upright bass music]
[Rigedly] I would say that the first day of casting was when
I thought that this was going to be a really special
experience. We cast a few actors
ahead of time and we were seeing a
combination of civilians and military
people. The military people, a lot of
them mostly veterans, we'd found through
an organization called Cammo that Victor runs.
Victor was there in the room with us and he just was able to
instantly connect with these people on a
level that none of the rest of
us could because they had this sort of
shared history and shared understanding.
[Laura Osnes] During World War II, it was the first time in
history that women became involved
serving in the Women's Army Corps.
I play a Greek goddess named Pallas Athene who was the
goddess of strength and war. She decides
she wants to leave Olympus to head down
to Earth to join the Women's Army Corps
in World War II.
[onstage dialogue]
[Will Swenson] I play the part of Jupiter, the Roman god.
I married Pallas, and Pallas takes an interest in
military and she decides that life with me
it's just far too boring and redundant.
We have a little fight, and she decides
she's gonna go enlist in the WAC, the
Women's Army Corps.
Typically as actors, we're in our theatrical
creative bubble and we work with a lot
of the same people and we go through the
same process, but I'm working with the vets.
They're not necessarily professional actors and I'm just having exposure to the people who were
mysterious to me in the past has been really enlightening.
I had a certain sense of you know what military people in general might be like.
[Jennean Farmer] I think the show is really important
because I think sometimes people who
aren't a part of the military, they have
specific ideas of what people are like.
We have dreams, we have hopes, we want to
be open about our experiences, and I
think it's really important to be accessible.
But, when I was reading the
play there was still that sense of
community amongst the women who were in
the Women's Army Corps in the script.
The same thing to place when I
was in boot camp: there is this sense of
community because you're learning how to
work together. So, for me, that was what
was resonating as far as my
experience in the military and as far as
what was in the script.
[Moayed] It's a miraculous thing that's happened.
World War II was often called "the last great
war," also one of the most brutal wars, and in
1944 the US War Department thought it
was important to have musicals written
by privates to be performed by soldiers
during battle on their off time.
The reason they did that was to boost morale,
so if you think about it, in 1944, the US
War Department thought it was important
to you have musical theater as a form of
art therapy for people living in
some of the most dire situations.
[explosions and music]
[Rigedly] The "blueprint specials" are soldier
shows, and that's a tradition that goes
back all the way to World War One and
Irving Berlin. That's just as an
official capacity as far as the US Army
concern, but as long as people been
fighting wars, soldiers have been
entertaining themselves in one way or another.
[tap dancing and music]
It's clearly something that is
necessary for them to cope with the
stresses of being away from home, being
between incredibly unstable often
violent environment, and there's
something about the community or the
escape or the act of creation that
entertainment and culture and art
provide that nothing else really can.
[onstage music]
[Hurtado] Army Entertainment as of January 5th
functionally ceased to exist. So, the
funding for programs for the soldier
show, for any sort of talent competition,
anything to do with with entertainment
"by the soldier for the soldier" or
for the families was actually defunded.
As a soldier myself and as a
veteran who benefited during the late
nineteen-eighties and early nineties
when programs existed in a huge way,
on Fort Hood, Texas, we had theater
programs. I was in Camelot, Carousel, and
big musicals, and all of us were
artillery men an infantrymen. These sort of
program made those of us that were
artistic but also brave
military service members that made us whole.
Slowly since that time, these
different programs have been losing
value among the leadership of the
military, particularly the theater
program. What theater does is it pulls you
away from where you are in your
situation in a way that that anything
else can't because it puts you in
somebody else's shoes, it puts you in another
location, and in a way that if you really
respect your craft will pull you out
completely. It's called "getting into
character." Getting into character pulls
you out of being a soldier just for a moment.
What I think that our nation can
learn from theater is how to put
themselves in other people's shoes,
whether it be a military character or
a minority character or any character can
actually change your perspective.
[tapping]
[Osnes] It's just been amazing and such a gift
to us, to get to be working with them and
hearing their stories. They've all been
very open, and I think it's been kind of
healing, I would hope, for the
servicemen and women to be involved in
something like this where they're
getting to share their experiences through art.
[Farmer] While I was in the military
I never saw a show like this while I was
in Iraq from April '03 to '04.
There were boxing matches!
Because when we do
our jobs, we have a certain duty, and
I believe that when we're doing our jobs
we have to be focused, we have to put on
the mask of being strong, of showing
strength, and once we're done with our
jobs, we have to have some type of way to let go.
[Hurtado] It's become something that on paper seems frivolous.
"Who needs troops singing and dancing?"
They miss the point
that it's troops singing and dancing in a
way that communicate to other troops, to
other contemporaries.
[onstage singing and music]
[applause]
I'm passionate about this piece because
even though this was seventy years ago, I can
see myself in the situations. I, in my
unit, there was a "sad sack" that I was in
charge of that I loved and took care of
and help get through the military. We see
ourselves and our colleagues in every
single one of these characters.
Even though it was seventy years ago, the passion and
the mission of a soldier never changes
and we will always recognize ourselves
in these works.
[dialogue]
[Rigedly] Part of this was just to
figure out what can we do to bridge the gap,
or call attention to the fact that
this is important, that it does have
value, and that is ought to be preserved?
[Maoyed] This divided country that we live in
right now needs more opportunity to see
both sides of the equation, to see what
it seems for civilians to see
military life, for military life to
civilian life, and see what it means to
to have a cohesion art form that can
really express America and patriotism in
a way that hasn't been seen in a very
long time.
[Swenson] There was a need a bridge between the sort of two worlds of this project.
All great civilizations are remembered for their
wars and for the art.
Which one do you want to be remembered for?
[triumphant music]