Boots on the Ground

A docu-drama

“OK, look. This is what theater is for. It’s for bringing people into a room to speak and think and feel something unexpected about something important. Together. It’s for sharing a million uniquely individual stories to remind us that we all share one story: We are all human. And when we experience a real work of art with other humans, we remember what that means. Boots on the Ground is a real work of art.”
— The Boston Globe

PHOTOGRAPHS BY T CHARLES ERICKSON

“Boots on the Ground is one of the most passionate, powerful plays I have seen in over 50 years!”
— The Warwick Beacon

“Boots On The Ground is important…It’s a wonderful theater doing a very good thing for the place it calls home. But it really should run in a bunch of places. It has things to tell us that we’re not hearing anywhere else.”
— The Providence Journal

“Boots on the Ground is often uncomfortable in its candor, it does not ‘whitewash’ or tip-toe around uncomfortable issues. It is wonderfully conceived, and honestly acted…the material that ‘Boots’ is drawn from, and the people who provided it, are treated with enormous respect and appreciation.”
— Broadway World

True stories. This 90-minute play is distilled from interviews of nearly 70 soldiers and their families, medical workers, journalists, ministers, and others. Boots ignores the national conversation about why we have been at war in Iraq, and instead shifts the conversation to who is being affected. The result is a riveting study of intimacy and what war does to a person’s core relationships.

Credits: Created by Laura Kepley and D. Salem Smith; Written by D. Salem Smith; Directed by Laura Kepley

Boots on the Ground had its world premiere at Trinity Repertory Company.