The returning rover . . .

I've returned from shooting a really interesting and poinient one-woman play that highlights the plight of the returning war veteran. It was designed and written about a Vietnam Veteran Nurse. Penny Rock is a widely sought after speaker whos life was headed for a bright singing career when, as happened to so many of the time, it was interrrupeted by the Vietnam Conflict in 1967. She had, to say the least, a life changing experience. Through her eyes and her words gleened from letters that she was sending home to her sister. She tells a horrific story of scenes in a medical unit that saw its share of conflict victims. Young though she was at the time she shows a wizdom beyond her years in the often grotesque imagery evoked in every line.

Normi Noel (Corporate Scenes on Normi Noel) does as dramatic a renition as I have ever seen on stage. She truely takes your emotions from sadness, ironic laughter, to tears. Her powerful statement in her performance "and there's No Background Music" is shouted by Penny in the telling of her story to a person who kept badgering her for her story while seeing the whole conflict through romatic, cinemagraphic visions of the confict.

It truely affects those who have seen conflicts as well as those of us who have, thankfully, not experienced them up close. With all of these issues taking a huge step back into the lime-light with the last few years of conflicts overseas it is never better then now to recognize the growing problems that our servicemen and women are coming home with once again. We need to raise our sensitivity and awareness to the long term and severe effects that these conflicts have on everyone involved from the obvious people on the front line to the support people that have to deal with the immediate damage that these conflicts wreck on society.