Keweenaw Report Your Source for Local News and Sports
Below the deck of the USS West Virginia, three men were discovered during the recovery efforts at Pearl Harbor. Their story would go on to inspire CS Wallace to pen the stage work Purple Hearts, as a fictional recount of their lives stuck inside the airtight storeroom. Purple Hearts explores what the conversations trapped below deck might have been like for three men so close to death.
It’s a tough play. It’s an intense play. It’s also a surprisingly funny play. Laugh out loud funny, in fact, in several places. It’s one of the things that excites me about it. A lot of times you get an intense story like this and it’s just kind of one note. It’s very hot through the whole thing. The level is very high and we just sort of get tortured. But this play is not like that. This is a beautiful and intimate story about these three men and these three women. And we get a lot of laughs along the way and we get some tears and some sorrow along the way. It’s a nice well-rounded journey. – Nich Radcliffe, Visiting Professor of Theater, Michigan Tech
Visiting Professor Nich Radcliffe director of the Michigan Tech Theater’s performance of Purple Hearts this week. He has previously taught and directed in Chicago and Iowa. He says that the students at Michigan Tech have been fantastic to work with as they work together on the close-knit set.
They have been utterly committed and not missed a rehearsal and not made an excuse for not knowing a line or for struggling to build a moment the way we’re talking about trying to build it. They just put their head down and they do the job. – Nich Radcliffe, Visiting Professor of Theater, Michigan Tech
Purple Hearts presented by the Michigan Tech Theater will premiere tomorrow evening at the McArdle Theater inside the Walker Arts and Humanities Center. Ticket prices for the performance are exclusively paid as you are able, with payment options ranging from 7 to 20 dollars. Those interested in learning more about the performance can find more details here.
