Michigan Tech Theatre to present ‘Purple Hearts’ April 10-13
HOUGHTON, Mich. (WJMN) – Michigan Tech Theatre invites the community to see its production of “Purple Hearts” by C.S. Wallace.
Inspired by true events, the play is a fictional retelling of three men who, in the wake of the attack on Pearl Harbor, find themselves trapped aboard the now-sunken USS West Virginia. The story explores the men’s relationships and character as they fight for the lives they hope to live and wrestle with the lives they’ve lived thus far.
“When they raised the USS West Virginia, which was one of the battleships sunk at the bombing, they took 66 bodies off the boat,” said Director Nich Radcliffe. “And a couple of years later, the boat was put back into service. The battleship was put back into service, and it was actually present at the treaty signing that ended World War II. But when they took those 66 to sea soldiers off the boat, there was one compartment where they found three men and they found that they had recorded on the wall the days that they had been trapped before they succumbed to suffocation. That the compartment was airtight. An article was written, and a poem was written, and a playwright back in the eighties, when he was in graduate school, at the University of Hawaii, he saw the article, saw the poem and got an idea for a sort of what if play. What, what, what happened? What if we could have seen into that compartment for those 16 days? ”
Radcliffe says this award-winning play will have the audience feeling an array of emotions and perhaps personal reflection.
“It’s difficult for me to talk about without choking up. It’s a really beautiful play. It’s a really intense play. It’s a really tough play. It’s also a surprisingly funny play. We’re laughing really hard in rehearsals. There are a lot of a lot of funny lines, a lot of funny moments. So, the play doesn’t really seek to preach at you. It seeks to take you on this journey and tell you this story. And you know, you have a choice at the end when you walk out, whether you want to contemplate some of those questions that are that are raised in your mind,” noted Radcliffe.
Performances of Michigan Tech Theatre’s “Purple Hearts” runs from Wednesday, April 10 through Saturday, April 13. All shows begin at 7:30 p.m. in the McArdle Theatre. Tickets can be purchased online at tickets.mtu.edu. Tickets for this event are Pay as You’re Able.
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