INTERVIEW: NYC during WWII is setting of new play ‘War Stories’
Photo: J. Ryan and Sophia DeLeo star in The Tank’s production of War Stories. Photo courtesy of Hunter Canning / Provided by Matt Ross PR with permission.
The new play War Stories, by Marthe Rachel Gold and directed by Christina Roussos, is set in the years of World War II. The events of the drama take place in New York City and center on the characters of Ruth, a young musician, and Nat, someone who challenges Ruth’s worldview, according to press notes. They talk music, labor, relationships and more, all while the European and Pacific theaters are seeing unimaginable bloodshed.
War Stories continues through June 12 at The Tank in New York City. One of the stars of the production is Sophia DeLeo, who plays Ruth.
“So I’ve been with this show for two-plus years now,” DeLeo said in a recent phone interview. “I got cast back in February 2020, and if I’m remembering correctly, we were set to start rehearsals in early April of 2020. Obviously that did not happen.”
DeLeo stuck with the play, working with the writer, director and composer Zachary Catron on Zoom. At first, the actor thought the shutdown would last one month, but the delay was prolonged, prolonged, prolonged.
“We did a Zoom reading in that time with the whole original cast, and then the project kind of went away for a while,” she said. “And then Christina and Marthe contacted me in October of 2021 saying that the show was going to go up in January, and would I like to be in it still. And I said, yes, and then it got postponed again because of Omicron. And then here I am. I’ve stuck with it. Every time they’ve asked me to come back, I’ve said yes absolutely because I love this play. That’s how I got connected with this. It’s been a long road.”
As soon as DeLeo read War Stories on the page, she fell in love with the piece. She finds the Ruth character truthful and authentic, a young woman trying to figure things out in the war-torn 1940s, and each of the COVID delays has allowed her time to go deeper with the role and try to understand her even better.
“When I was first auditioning, I really related to Ruth, who in the first act of the play is 20, and she’s not really sure what she wants in life and is kind of flitting between things and between relationships,” DeLeo said. “That was very much how I felt when I was 22 or 23 and had first auditioned for this piece. I remember thanking Marthe when I got cast. ‘Thank you for writing a play about a young woman who doesn’t know what she wants. I really connect to that,’ and Marthe looked at me and said, ‘Well, I hope some day you will know what you want.’ And then here we are 2-3 years later. I’m in my mid-20s now, as the character is at the end of the play, and I feel like I can really relate to some of the things in the last scene of the show and in the second act on such a deeper level.”
DeLeo added: “I love the way that it’s written realistically. I do a lot of auditions, and it’s so rare to … read a play and so immediately feel like I know who this is. I know what this is about, and it’s beautifully written. And it’s speaking to so many important political things as well. It’s just such a great piece.”
As DeLeo embarked on this journey with the rest of the ensemble, the actors collectively learned as much as they could about the WWII period. The cast members knew many of the chapter headings of this pivotal conflict in the 20th century, but they wanted to set up a timeline in their notes so they could convey their thoughts, emotions and actions accurately on stage.
“We’ve all been discussing the historical context of the piece as we’ve gone through rehearsals,” DeLeo said. “For me, the biggest thing was the play spans the course of the entire war. We start the first act in 1941, and then we end in 1946. So every scene takes place at a very specific different point in the war, so for me the important thing was not only going through and re-researching, dusting off my high school knowledge of World War II, but also taking into account in each scene, OK, what is going on with the world? Is the U.S. even in the war yet? And if we are, what’s happening? What do we know? What do we still not know? I actually had to go through and made a little chart for myself for every scene, saying, OK, this is the year. This is the time period. What’s happening in March 1942 as opposed to what’s happening in August 1946 later on in the second act? That was really helpful to me, not only knowing the general knowledge of World War II, but knowing specifically we are we in the war in each scene.”
That research — and this multi-year journey DeLeo has been on with War Stories — has finally paid off with a production that has met the audience’s eyes after a long delay and a lot of uncertainty along the way.
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
War Stories, featuring Sophia DeLeo, continues through June 12 at The Tank in New York City. Click here for more information and tickets.
