In 90 minutes, playwright and actor Douglas Taurel performs 14 different characters - men, women, and children - affected by various wars. He exposes their scars with darkness and humor while transporting the audience to a dozen different wartime eras - from the sweltering jungles of Vietnam to the freezing more...
fields of Valley Forge. Taurel masterfully portrays the stories of those most deeply touched by the scourge of war, including a father in the wake of his veteran son's suicide, a soldier dealing with the loss of his limb, a wife and son coping with a deployed father's absence, a grieving mother remembering her son at the Vietnam Memorial Wall, a perilously shell-shocked World War II veteran, a female combat veteran sharing her struggles with PTSD and experiences as a woman on the front lines, and many more. Created through exhaustive research, actual letters sent from soldiers to their loved ones, and verbatim language lifted from countless interviews with veterans, the play is an intensely personal look at the humanity behind the specter of war. The American Soldier is decidedly not a political play but a profoundly human story - a piece of theater created to honor our veterans and their families and to deepen our collective understanding of their experiences.
