Producer Marsha Roberts and
Playwright/Director Robert Rector visiting the ruins of
Pompeii during the 1998 Mediterranean Tour of "Letters From the Front."
Photo by Michelle Rosen
MARSHA ROBERTS (Producer)
Marsha has spent years learning how to entertain an audience, first as an award winning film editor and eventually as a producer. The more she became involved in show business, the greater the pull was toward theatre. As a result, she formed Produced By Marsha Roberts, and created unique "Corporate Theatre" presentations both in the U.S. and abroad for companies such as Coca-Cola, IBM, and Domino's Pizza. These productions whetted her appetite for the real thing, which came in the middle of the night on September 13, 1990 when she awoke with a clear vision for Letters from the Front. Luckily her husband and business partner Robert Rector was a writer. Six months later, on March 6, 1991, Letters from the Front opened at the 14th Street Playhouse in Atlanta. Since then, through her skill, determination and considerable powers of persuasion, Marsha has taken the production to hundreds of venues across the world.
Letters from the Front, Marsha says that people are usually surprised by how entertaining it is. "I love to tell the story about a VIP who was backstage with me before the show because he was going to introduce us. As we were talking, he laughed and said, 'I hate to tell you but my wife drags me to these things and I always fall asleep in the first 15 minutes.' After the show, he came up to me, slapped me on the back and said, 'You got me! Ten minutes into the thing and I was hooked! I loved every minute of it!"
It's this kind of response that keeps Marsha dedicated to Letters from the Front. "We know what we're doing is significant," she says. "People come up to us after the show and tell us that our play has had a healing effect on them -- especially those who are in, or have been in, the military. Others remark about how the sentiments expressed by Americans 100 or 200 years ago are strikingly similar to those expressed today. But the comment we hear most is that our show 'hits close to home, close to the heart.' When you're having that kind of effect on people, you know you're doing something right."
Being able to combine her love of theatre with traveling all over the world is a dream come true for Marsha. So after all these years what does she see next for Letters from the Front? "That's easy," she says: "Broadway."
ROBERT RECTOR (Playwright/Director)
Bob comes to theatre after two decades as a writer, director, cinematographer, and editor of film projects ranging from television programming to feature films. In the late 60's he was one of the pioneers of music videos, cranking out literally hundreds of them for two nationally syndicated TV shows The Now Explosion and Music Connection. "We had zero budgets to work with back then -- just a few rolls of film and the good wishes of the producer," he recalls. "You were writer, director, cameraman, and editor all rolled into one, and you had to turn in five finished films a week. Luckily, I was very young and sleep wasn't all that important."
Bob wrote and directed an ecology based feature film Don't Change My World, followed by years of making TV commercials, corporate films, and documentaries, winning a number of national and international awards (including eight C.I.N.E Golden Eagles). The years of documentary filmmaking on subjects ranging from wildlife to social issues to sports helped prepare him for the research required in writing Letters from the Front.
Skeptical of the project at first, Bob became a believer when he first held a Civil War letter still stained with mud from the battlefield, written by a young, war weary soldier pouring his heart out to his bride back home. "These letters really do peel away the layers of who we are as Americans," Bob says, "while at the same time defining what our priorities should be -- not just as a society, but as human beings."
Letters from the Front is Bob's first play and he admits that he came into the world of theatre kicking and screaming. "I had no background in theatre," he says, "No training. I was accustomed to the rough and tumble, seat-of-your-pants world of documentary filmmaking. Fortunately the people I worked with were very patient with me. Everybody believed in this project from the git-go and I was terrified that I wouldn't live up to their expectations. Its been gratifying to see how well Letters from the Front has been received."
