How the Idea For the Play Originated

by Marsha Roberts, Producer

In the early days of the Persian Gulf deployment known as Operation Desert Shield, we all saw news stories about service men and women waiting eagerly for each mail call.  They wanted to know that their loved ones were well and that the life they left behind would still be intact when they returned home.  These scenes were frequently interspersed with others showing the high tech machinery of war.  The contrast struck me.  No matter how advanced the instruments of war become, the basic human emotions of the men and women who shoulder the burden of war never change.  Thus the seeds of this play were first sown.

I awoke in the middle of the night on September 13, 1990 with a title and a vision for the play as clear to me as a neon sign: Letters From the Front.  This experience had certainly never happened to me before, but the most unique experience was yet to come.  As I began to tell people of my idea, the idea itself generated such good will and positive reaction that the project began to take on a life of its own.  This phenomenon has continued to this day.

The most enthusiastic supporter has been my husband and business partner Robert Rector, who also happens to be a writer.  We began collecting letters written during all the major American wars, as well as from our troops in the Persian Gulf, and decided to use the exact words written by these men and women.  We chose certain letters over others because of a writer's ability to communicate universal emotions and experiences -- sentiments that we all can identify with.

But as our research continued, it became clear that we needed a dramatic context in which to present the letters, putting them into some sort of human perspective.  This, after traveling down many unfruitful paths, eventually led to the creation of Katharine Hartgrove and Johnny Chastain.