Culled from two centuries of actual letters to local newspapers, this is a portrait of a community written in its own words. This ingenious dovetailing of letters creates a unique, timeless mosaic of small-town America with dozens of colorful characters and conflicts, by turns banal or beautiful, outrageous or moving, comic or profound.
In the days of instant e-mail and Internet relationships, there's something old-fashioned about citizens communicating with other citizens through the smudgy, actual medium of newsprint. Here, a community reflects on wars, racism, taxes, child abuse, and some of the quirkiest and funniest subjects one can only find in the Letters to the Editor section of any newspaper.
Letters to the Editor has drawn comparisons to Thornton Wilder's Our Town, and has garnered positive reviews in performances from Bloomsburg, PA to Los Angeles, CA. It has been embraced by audiences nationwide, both on the stage and in the book version that followed, Letters to the Editor: Two Hundred Years in the Life of an American Town. Featured in American Theatre (Sept. 1996) and Playbill Online (Nov. 5, 1998).