‘Dear Jack, Dear Louise’ debuts at the WPAC this weekend

The latest community theater production will be taking the Wilson Performing Arts Center main stage this coming weekend.
“Dear Jack, Dear Louise,” a two person show by Ken Ludwig, can be seen at 7:30 p.m. on April 17 and 18, and at 2:30 p.m. on April 19. The show stars Ryan Fuller as Jack and Blair DeBolt as Louise, and is directed by Larry Brandstetter, who has countless hours of directing experience under his belt.
“In general I’ve done about 30 shows in a community theater, and then I did at the Red Oak Junior High and Middle School another 80 or so. Most recently, I directed ‘Every Brilliant Thing here’,” commented Brandstetter.
When it came to choosing this particular show, Brandstetter said he was drawn to the fact that author Ludwig based the show on real life letters written by his parents.
“It’s a story about love during World War II. Jack is from Pennsylvania, Louise grew up in Brooklyn, both are single, and their fathers get together and decide that they need to get Jack and Louise together. The fathers really pushed them to communicate with each other, and since this took place in the 1940s, the way they had to do that was by writing letters,” explained Brandstetter. “Jack eventually listens to his father’s pleadings and writes to Louise, she responds back, and as the show begins and progresses, we start hearing those letters that are back and forth, and see them go from getting to know each other, to becoming friends, and eventually growing in love.”
Complicating the process is the fact that Jack has graduated medical school and become a doctor, was drafted and assigned to Oregon, while Louise remained across the country in New York City learning acting and dancing in the Manhattan School for the Arts.
“It’s important to note that during this letter writing, they haven’t actually met. Also, there are times when Jack gets called to take care of wounded in the Pacific, and when he comes back Louise has no idea where he’s been. He does attempt to get leave a few times but the commanding officer declines to grant it. Later on, she gets a job in a road show as he goes off to Europe, again preventing them from having time to meet each other. To see how it ends, you’ll just have to come and see the show,” stated Brandstetter.
To help heighten the experience for both the actors and the audience, Brandstetter has gotten copies of real life letters between service members and their eventual wifes, sharing them with his actors to help them build their characters and will also share them with the audiences.
“Jim Hoskinson is collecting all the letters from his father that he wrote to his mother, and he’s given me copies of those. Larry Barnett and Marty shared some copies of letters that he had written to her from Vietnam. Also, Maggie McQuown introduced me to this friend of hers from Ames, and she was telling him about the show. He had all the letters his parents had written and they were all online, and he emailed me a whole bunch of letters. On the show nights, we’re going to have some tables out front, so the audience can read them, and we’re going to make copies and stuff a letter in the program, so everybody coming will open their program, and see an actual letter. I want it to be a real experience for the audience and allow them to see that these types of letter actually existed,” advised Brandstetter.
For the role of Louise, Brandstetter said he chose DeBolt from multiple actresses that auditioned, but no one turned up to audition for Jack. Brandstetter remembered Fuller from a prior performance and reached out to him, and Fuller wasn’t aware of auditions but volunteered to come in for a reading, and Brandstetter said he knew he’d found his Jack.
“They both have experience and are both coming to me with a theater background. Neither one of them have been in a show where there’s only two people and they have all these lines. But they have a work ethic, and they’re not afraid to help each other out and take in this enormous task,” explained Brandstetter.
As the rehearsals have gone on, Brandstetter said he’s been enjoying incorporating real history into the roles of his actors and using his directing skills to help them dig deeply into who their characters are. He’s also enjoyed doing a show that reminds audience members just how long it took to communicate in the old days.”
“The younger members of the audience may be asking why they don’t just take out their phones and call each other. When it comes to the armed services, service members usually have phones and can call and text their wives daily. That’s not at all what it was like in the 1940s. If you were trying to reach someone by letter, especially overseas, it would probably take a week and a half for a letter to get from the U.S. to Europe, if not longer, and vice-versa,” Brandstetter said.
Brandstetter also described what audiences can expect if they come and see the show this weekend.
“They can see a portrait of what what life was like for relationship to build and grow and even sustain during the 1940s, during World War II and what it may have been like in Vietnam and even Korea, because it’s the same type of situation. They just had letter writing, and they’re going to take away an understanding of how relationships were built and sustained in the case of a future husband and wife that were separated by work and war,” stated Branstetter.
Blair Debolt talked about the process she used to find the character of Louise, saying it changed over the course of rehearsals.
“Starting at the beginning, I felt like I had a pretty good grasp, and then as I went on, I felt like she was changing a little bit. I ended up actually mapping out her character throughout the whole play, and asked myself questions like what’s her favorite color? What would it be her favorite song from the 1940s? After I started getting the groove, I listen to 1940s music on the way here for rehearsal, and then on the way home. It’s a nice reminder of the time period and what I’m representing as a character for her,” explained DeBolt.
DeBolt added it’s been a very unique experience to play a role in this time period without modern day advancements.
“We’ve talked about the fact that they wouldn’t have cell phones, but if they did, they’d be texting constantly. But that also brought to mind the fact that they have a lot less arguments because they do have to kind of let it fizzle and die down before they write out their thoughts and then send it all the way across the country to each other. It’s a lot more thought provoking instead of them arguing over text about someone not folding the laundry like they were asked to do. Since they write letters, if one gets angry with the other they have time to think about why the other person did what they did,” commented DeBolt.
DeBolt added her favorite part of the experience has been memorizing all of Louise’s lines.
“It’s a lot. I was really nervous at the beginning, and I even told Larry, I would rather memorize a two and a half hour opera than all of this because to me, that’s a lot easier. But after I got going, I realized I can actually do this. It was a lot of self-confidence building in memorizing all of my lines and knowing what I had to do,” said DeBolt.
As for Fuller, his route to finding Jack has been an interesting one, as he shares similarities with Jack’s personality.
“I feel like I relate to Jack because he’s kind of a quieter, shy guy, but he’s also very different from me because I’m not and have never been in the armed services, so I’ve been working on that. The role has also been its own unique experience because, like others have said, we’re really privileged today to have text messages, where as back then, you were communicating with someone solely through letters and it really demonstrates the commitment that it must’ve took for these people to write letters for three plus years to each other instead of texting, you know, multiple times a day,” advised Fuller.