Philly Fringe shows focus on veterans with Iran, Vietnam parallels
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The horror roared back – the burned bodies, the amputations, the blast injuries, and worst of all, the wounded children caught in the crossfire of war.
So, when retired nurse and Army medic Jody Austin, now a playwright, learned that a servicewoman was among the first of America’s military forces killed in the Iran war, she needed more than a moment.
“It brought tears to my eyes,” she said, recalling how she caught the news out of the corner of her eye on a patient’s television set. “I just excused myself and went into the bathroom.”
At a time when American military leaders are busy testing for testosterone, Austin is busy countering that by presenting her play, “Not Without Her Stories: Her Service Comes With A Sacrifice Too,” at this year’s Philadelphia Fringe Festival. Austin wants to make sure women like Sgt. Nicole Amor, who died in a drone attack in Kuwait on March 1, are not forgotten.
“Not Without Her Stories” joins Vietnam War-based “Waiting for Westy” as two veteran-centric plays in this year’s Fringe, the 350-plus show extravaganza running Sept. 8-27.
Austin, a reservist, saw tours of duty during Operations Desert Storm, Desert Shield and Southern Watch. As a medic, she helped assess patients, worked with them as they were transported from the front lines to hospitals in Germany, and then accompanied them back to the war zone if they could return to fighting.
“It’s traumatic,” she said. “It wears on you when you see the things you see — the amputations, the burn complications. You start seeing it over and over in your mind. You unfortunately take it home with you. I get flashbacks. I have a therapist. I just try to make sure when I feel triggered, I call my therapist.”
The play, co-written in part with her business partner Tiffani Dean, traces the lives and struggles of four women who meet in base camp, become friends, and stay in touch throughout their service and in the years afterwards. The play incorporates poetry and music,
Like Austin’s, their lives become complicated.
“Our needs are unique,” Austin said. “A lot of women veterans are mothers. You come back home and your children don’t know you. My marriage did break up – separation puts a stress on the marriage. It felt like we grew apart.
“People expect you’ll pick up where you left off,” she said. “That transition isn’t that easy. It doesn’t happen right away.
“When you come back, you feel you are stuck between the military way of life and the civilian way,” she said. “In the military, you are used to a certain type of structure and a certain amount of camaraderie, and you don’t have that when you come home.”
‘Not Without Her Stories’
In the play, one character is sexually assaulted and struggles for justice. Her story mirrors the experiences of one of Austin’s fellow servicewomen. It also reflects a current case, Austin said.
While serving as a civilian engineer aboard a military ship in 2021, Elsie Dominguez was raped by the ship’s captain, she said in a lawsuit she filed against the military in 2023. In August, a federal judge dismissed the suit, ruling that the incident should be handled as if it were a worker’s compensation case, “like a sprain or a strain,” Austin said bitterly.
After Austin left the military, she went on to become a nurse and retired in April from her job at a Veterans Administration hospital.
Life moved on, but war’s after-effects linger. Fourth of July fireworks trigger Austin’s post-traumatic stress disorder, as does the memory of Sept. 11, 2001.
“The current war is very triggering,” she said, describing it as “senseless.”
“I worry about our troops. They’ve been deployed too long. Their morale is low. You start to feel hopeless.”
‘Waiting for Westy’
Playwright Joshua Crone understands all those feelings and explores some of them in his play, “Waiting for Westy. The play, based on what he heard was a true story, involves Vietnam vets who hang out at the Doyle-Gerszewski Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 8051 clubhouse on Front Street in South Philadelphia.
In the play, they’re gathered at the clubhouse in 1987, on the night before the Philadelphia Vietnam Veterans Memorial is set to be dedicated with Gen. William Childs Westmoreland making an appearance at the memorial and at the VFW post, which was nearby.
“They refused to let him in,” Crone said. Crone, a former Marine turned playwright, had long wanted to write about the Vietnam War, but couldn’t find a way in until he learned about what happened at the VFW.
“Westmoreland was a controversial figure. Some people really liked him,” Crone said. “He had every reason to think he would show up and be welcomed and treated like a retired general.”
But many at the post loathed the general, blaming him particularly for deaths that occurred during the 1968 siege of Khe Sanh – 274 troops were killed and 2,500 were wounded.
“It was incredibly hard to resupply,” Crone said. “They were living in horrible conditions, not getting enough food, getting bombed constantly and getting eaten by rats. They were just used as pawns in a PR way. It was an example of the decisions that were made that showed total disregard for the lives of our American service men and women.”
Crone, who is also acting in the play, said he conceived “Waiting for Westy,” to use every bit of his Yellow Bicycle Theater, located above a restaurant on the second floor of a building at 15th and Arch streets. Crone built a bar in the theater and got a special use permit to serve the audience drinks so they can pick up the VFW vibe. They’ll move around the building – walking from the bar to a room with a pool table. At one point, the audience will be on the stage, watching the performers acting among the seats.
“I didn’t set out with any agenda drawing parallels” between the war in Iran and the Vietnam War, Crone said. “But you could argue that the stuff with Iran could go down that same path.”
For him, the motivation was to learn about the Vietnam War while veterans are still alive. “That generation isn’t going to be around much longer, and I wanted to understand them,” he said. “They talk about battles in history books, but these guys are talking about them from the viewpoint of being in the foxholes.”
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“Not Without Her Stories: Her Service Comes With A Sacrifice Too,” produced by the Collective Mic, a women and BIPOC-owned arts group, Sept. 8, 11, and 13 at the Asian Arts Initiative Third Floor, 1219 Vine St., Philadelphia.
“Waiting for Westy,” Yellow Bicycle Co., Sept. 9, 10, and 13 at Yellow Bicycle Theater, 1435 Arch St., Philadelphia.
Philadelphia Fringe Festival Sept. 8-27 – tickets to all shows available online.