Soldier’s Heart
Play Description
Before heading off to war in Iraq, Casey Johnson neatly organizes her life into a box of lists, envelopes, and registration forms for her son's activities. Months later, she returns to Western Pennsylvania forever changed, with deep psychological scars that no amount of arranging seems to be able to fix.
Production Info
Cast: 7 total (3 female, 4 male)Full Length Drama (about 100 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Contemporary Costumes
- Reviews
- About the Author(s)
- About the Book
- Special Notes
- Productions
Press Quotes
“Tammy Ryan’s poignant SOLIDER’S HEART shines a light on the struggles facing woman warriors … a tense, raw, troubling and no-nonsense examination of what happens to soldiers, particularly female soldiers, serving in the military … This is not an easy play to watch. Nor is it meant to be.” —Alice Carter, Tribune
“Portrayls of soldiers wrecked by war date to the ancient Greeks (see Aeschylus), but Ms Ryan adeptly reworks the time-tested recipe from a woman’s perspective to make it seem fresh again … Briskly written in brief scenes that easily flash back and forth … the subject of sexual assault in the military gives the play weight and merit. Ms. Ryan deftly layers critical incidents that culminate in a forceful climax … Frank, colloquial language delivers a strong sense of spontaneity.” —Michael Sommers, New York Times
“Ryan brings a searing story to life about the high cost of war … Ryan’s play could border on political [but] it’s all about relationships: what you give up in times of war and how families are destroyed in the process … a disturbing, topical production, building on the terror and sacrifices that never-ending wars entail.” —Liz Keill, The Alternative Press
“Ryan brings a heart-wrenching experience into alignment with the blisteringly traumatic aftershock of rape … It is a story worth telling.” —Simon Saltzman, Curtain Up
“Tammy Ryan has written an intense drama that grabs you from the first scene and doesn’t let go until the lights go down two hours later … a story with a strong dramatic arc … on an important subject with which we must deal decisively, now.” —Ruth Ross, NJ Arts Maven
“… richly nuanced, three-dimensional characters and a neatly constructed, riveting story. Ryan has done her homework.” —Bob Rendell, Talkin’ Broadway
Author(s)
Tammy RyanTAMMY RYAN is a playwright and librettist whose work has been performed across the United States and internationally. She was awarded the Francesca Primus Prize by the American Theater Critic’s Association for her play LOST BOY FOUND IN WHOLE FOODS (Premiere Stages/Playwrights Theater of New Jersey.). Other plays include SOLDIER'S HEART, DARK PART OF THE FOREST (Premiere Stages) A CONFLUENCE OF DREAMING, BABY'S BLUES, FBI GIRL (Pittsburgh Playhouse), and THE MUSIC LESSON (Florida Stage/2001 Carbonell Award Best Production/2004 AATE Distinguished New Play Award). In addition, her play, TAR BEACH (Luna Stage), a finalist for the Terrance McNally Playwriting Award and a Jane Chambers Award honoree was included on “The List” of the most outstanding plays by women playwrights in 2014 compiled by the Kilroys. Ryan has held fellowships at Virginia Center of the Creative Arts, Hambidge Center, and the Sewanee Writers Conference. Her work has been featured in the National New Play Network’s National Showcase of Plays and has been read and developed at the New Harmony Project, Premiere Stages Play Festival, The Ignite Festival, The Lark and elsewhere.
Book Information
| Publisher | BPPI |
|---|---|
| Publication Date | 8/5/2016 |
| Pages | 80 |
| ISBN | 9780881456707 |
Special Notes
If original stage producers credits appear in bold below, all licensees are required to include them in the following form on the title page in all programs distributed in connection with performances of the Play and in all advertising in which the full cast appears in size of type not less than ten percent (10%) of the size of the title of the Play:
Originally produced by the Pittsburgh Playhouse of Point Park University, Conservatory of Performing Arts, Ronald Allan-Lindblom, Artistic Director, Earl Hughes Producing Director
In addition, the following must appear within all programs distributed in connection with performances of the Play:
by special arrangement with Broadway Play Publishing Inc, NYC
www.broadwayplaypub.com
Upcoming and Recent Productions
Nonprofessional
Related Plays
$15.00–$15.95 Play Description
A groundbreaking masterpiece of the modern theatre. The play tells the tale of a poor soldier, a barber in the army, who is overwhelmed by the military and forced to become a human guinea pig for quasi-medical research. Consumed by jealousy over his lover’s infidelity, Woyzeck is driven to despair, to madness, and to murder. Poignant and grotesque, insightful and all-too-human, the play broke every theatrical mold of its time, paving the way for theatre as we know it today.
Production Info
Cast: 16 total (4 female, 12 male, doubling, bit parts, children, extras)Full Length Drama (about 120 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Period Costumes
$15.00–$15.95 Play Description
A promising Ethiopian soccer star in Israel is courted by an American sports agent. The athlete is involved with another Ethiopian who risks being deported. Meanwhile, there is also a reckless, clandestine operation afoot to airlift one last group of Falasha Jews from Ethiopia to Israel.
Production Info
Cast: 8 total (3 female, 5 male, multiethnic cast)Full Length Drama (about 85 minutes)
Multiple Sets
Contemporary Costumes
$15.00–$15.95 Play Description
Set in South Lebanon, HOW HIS BRIDE CAME TO ABRAHAM is a soaring love story. When a fleeing refugee encounters a soldier wounded by a roadside bomb, irresistible Palestinian and Israeli characters clash, then ignite a passion that heals.
Production Info
Cast: 2 total (1 female, 1 male, multiethnic cast)Full Length Drama (about 100 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Contemporary Costumes
$15.00–$15.95 Play Description
Set in 1963, LAST DAYS OF THE HIGH FLIER is the story of a young man waiting for his life to begin, the mysterious ex-pilot who enters his life, and the intricate dance of friendship, betrayal, and forgiveness that takes place between the two men. Historically based, the story revolves around political conspiracies, including the CIA’s secret war in Laos. It also addresses personal struggles that occurred almost a half-century ago but still have relevance in an age in which intelligence failures and civil liberties threats dominate the news.
Production Info
Cast: 10 total (4 female, 6 male)Full Length Drama (about 130 minutes)
Multiple Sets
Contemporary Costumes
Play Description
Four Arab women from across the ages meet in the afterlife. As these characters — who include the Biblical Delilah and a secular modern Arab-American — struggle to come to terms with their lives and their choices, this shockingly funny play skewers traditional views on sex, family, and terrorism.
Production Info
Cast: 4 total (4 female)Full Length Drama (about 100 minutes)
Single Set
Period Costumes
$0.00–$15.95 Play Description
Two college professors have left their homeland for a country that soon devolves into a war zone. They're accustomed to lives of comfort, but it's hard to get comfortable when you're chained to a radiator. HOSTAGES explores the intricacies of human nature when it's deprived of personal contact and torn from the pleasantries of everyday life.
Production Info
Cast: 3 total (3 male)Full Length Drama (about 80 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Contemporary Costumes
$15.00–$15.95 Play Description
Peace among Muslims, Christians, and Jews? It happened once, in Spain, for several hundred years, why couldn’t it happen again? When NYU students Ibrahim and Paloma study an ancient Muslim treatise on the art and practice of love, they debate the complexities of romantic relationships while falling into one. After tragedy strikes this Muslim–Christian interfaith romance, it tests the limits of love in a post-9/11 world and Ibrahim must seek the help of his friend Jared, a young Jewish attorney, to clear his name.
Production Info
Cast: 3 total (1 female, 2 male)Full Length Drama (about 110 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Contemporary Costumes
$15.00–$15.95 Play Description
A play about love, sex, ambition, and the Arab American experience, ROAR is the story of a Palestinian American family living in Detroit in the wake of the first Gulf War. Karema and Ahmed Yacoub work long hours in their liquor store while their teenage daughter, Irene, relentlessly pursues a career as a pop star. All hell breaks loose when a notoriously sexy and scandalous relative, Hala, gets thrown out of Kuwait and arrives on the doorstep without a return ticket.
Production Info
Cast: 5 total (3 female, 2 male)Full Length Drama (about 100 minutes)
Single Set
Contemporary Costumes
$15.00–$15.95 Play Description
Midway through Albert Camus's The Stranger, an Arab is killed. Leaping from this moment and working backwards through possible histories of tangled romance, ethnic conflict, and random violence, Betty Shamieh has crafted a play inspired by this unnamed character. Infused with elements of Middle Eastern oral storytelling traditions and set in French Algiers on the brink of revolution, THE STRANGEST is an absurdist murder mystery about three Algerian brothers who vie for the love of the same woman. Their bitter rivalry ends with one brother being inexplicably gunned down by a French stranger.
Production Info
Cast: 7 total (2 female, 5 male)Full Length Drama (about 100 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Contemporary Costumes
$15.00 Play Description
It is a few years after the end of World War II. Billy Maitland, a young wheelchair-bound ex-Army Corporal is the sole remaining patient in a VA hospital when a new patient, Flight Commander Simon Trevelyan, arrives — accompanied by his American ex-WAAF wife. When Billy, who worships FDR, discovers that his new fellow-patient was a former pilot in the Royal Air Force, he insists the cynical and disillusioned Simon join him in reliving the war, with Billy pretending to be FDR and Simon pretending to be Winston Churchill. In a time before PTSD was identified and when treatment for the effects of the horrors of war were little understood, their doctor thinks this play-acting might help them recover from the physical and mental traumas of their combat experiences. As the two servicemen's extremely different personal and historical stories unfold, HOTEL VICTORY portrays the aftereffects of battle and contrasts war as it is experienced by the Grand Figures of history vs. the way it is experienced by the men and women they send into the fight.
Production Info
Cast: 4 total (1 female, 3 male)Full Length Drama (about 100 minutes)
Single Set
Period Costumes