“The Few, The Proud.” “Be All that You Can Be.”  These are just some of the ways the military uses to attract the many that enlist each year.  However, beneath the handsome and dutiful men in uniform shown on television and moviehouse screens lies a darker side of the military that is never shown and almost never talked about: rape and sexual assault.  Red Fern Theatre Company, an institution that strives to bring about change through powerful commentary in the shows they produce, explores these issues in Donna Fiumano-Farley‘s A Shot Away.  With six different characters representing their real-life counterparts, whom the playwright interviewed during the four years of dramaturgical research prior to production, the play takes the words of the victims and sets them onstage.  Against these six individual stories is the story of Tina Priest, an Army Private whose death yielded suspicious circumstances and is survived by her mother and twin sister.

Before the play has even started, the audience is greeted with Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the USA,” with the words “I’m proud to be an American” sung in jubilant repetition, juxtaposed against Katherine Akiko Day‘s dark and minimalist scenic design.  In the 14th Street Y‘s small black box theatre, by the back wall, we see a huge backdrop of an American flag; in the forefront, a “porch-like” setting, complete with a coffee table and wicker chairs.  Just then, a single spotlight turns on, and we see Joy Priest (Jackie Sanders), Tina’s mother, telling her daughter’s story through the diaries and knick-knacks she left behind.  Soon enough, Priest’s story is interrupted by the stories of six others, whose silhouettes behind the backdrop soon reveal the following characters: Panayiota (Laura Anderson), a young Asian-American woman; KC (brilliantly enacted by Dana Berger), a tomboy; Amando (Grant Chang), a Filipino man; Shirley (Elizabeth Flax), a middle-aged Black woman; Marianne (Jessica Myhr), a self-professed “girly-girl,” and Michael (Jeff Pierce), a seemingly all-American man’s man.

While each of their characters are completely different, their stories start off on the same positive note, describing their initial interest in joining the military forces.  KC, drunk with her friends at a bar, impulsively decides they all enlist together and in the end, turns out to be the only one who went through with it.  Amando has always wanted to serve, but with no opportunity was there for him in his native Philippines, he comes to America and enlists.  For Tina Priest, it came as a surprise for her loved ones that she would join, as she “loved life.”  Her story, which is told sporadically throughout, then turns from the portrait of a girl set on living a quiet military life in Fort Hood to having her life turn topsy-turvy as she is sent to Iraq.