Dear Jack, Dear Louise, Dear Friend
By Ryan Paul, guest writer and Festival Orientation/Seminar Moderator
Summer 2025
Dear Friend,
I hope this message finds you well. They say that letter writing is a lost art, and you know how I feel about losing things, so I thought I would give it a try. I ran into an old friend, Ken Ludwig, you may remember seeing one of his plays on one of our many summer excursions to the Utah Shakespeare Festival. In 2016 we saw his adaptation of The Three Musketeers and in 2007 we enjoyed the rousing musical adaptation of his Tony Award-winning Lend Me a Tenor.
As Ken and I were catching up, I mentioned my recent visit to London where I had seen the WWII-themed musical Operation Mincemeat and the song that I could not get out of my head, with the line “Why did we have to meet in the middle of a war? What a silly thing to do.” Excitedly, he told me that he had written a play along those same lines, titled Dear Jack, Dear Louise. The play chronicles the fictionalized meeting of his parents during WWII. His father was a military doctor from Pennsylvania and his mother was a showgirl from Brooklyn. His parents “met through letters, courted through letters, and finally his father proposed by letter.” He mentioned that a play written as “a series of letters during World War II seemed like one truthful way to express their unique and wonderful relationship.”
In the play, the two characters, Jack and Louise, begin corresponding at the request of their fathers. The play and their relationship unfolds through their letters. As they begin to learn more about each other and the challenges of trying to meet in person during the war, their relationship grows, and of course, is tested, and not just by distance. Through their correspondence, we get to meet a variety of other characters including roommates, family members, and military officers. Each of these people help define the relationship between the two letter writers.
As Jack and Louise continue their correspondence, the writing moves from formality to a closeness that belies the fact that they have never met in person. This thought has me pondering the meaning of connection. In our modern society, one of digital and sometimes impersonal communication, what does it mean to connect with someone? Sure, we can look them up on social media, but how true is that really?
There is visceral and physical impact of putting pen to paper, but, I suppose, there is still the lingering notion that my message to you could be read by somebody else. Unlike our conversations in the Seminar Grove, letters––while meant to be private––rarely are. I wonder if John and Abigail Adams or Harry and Bess Truman ever thought that their private letters would be published for anyone to read?
It seems to me the notion that we as the audience are “listening in” to the private conversations of Jack and Louise and are hoping and rooting for their success, even when it looks as if it may never happen, is an intentional way of connecting us to the story of these two young people who met in the middle of a war. As Ken was describing the play I had a sudden realization that I had never really thought much about the youth of my own parents, that they were young once. What a love letter Ken has created to his parents who were married over 50 years!
Imagine my surprise when I found out that our beloved Utah Shakespeare Festival is producing Ken Ludwig’s Dear Jack, Dear Louise this summer in the Eileen and Allen Anes Studio Theatre. This is a perfect space for this play! In other exciting news John DiAntonio and Caitlin Wise, who performed as Petruchio and Katherina in last season’s The Taming of the Shrew have been cast as Jack and Louise. What fun it will be to see them together again on the stage. (And a bonus: they are real-life husband and wife too!)
As you know, I devoutly believe that both history and theatre are intimately connected. Ultimately, they are both about story, those things that motivate us, connect us, and bind us together as a wonderfully diverse and expanding society. Please, my friend, let us continue our story this summer at the Utah Shakespeare Festival. I hope to see you in the Grove and as always, in the words of the great American poet Bill Withers, “I wish you well.”
Yours,
Ryan
P.S. References to a friendship with Ken Ludwig are fictional and used for dramatic purposes. This is the theatre after all. -R.P.
