Blog: Why Do You Stand There in the Rain? Seats Available For Performances

I attended a very powerful performance last night of "Why Do You Stand There in the Rain" and hope to encourage you, dear reader, to go and enjoy a truly amazing production in it's US premiere.  There are seats available as I write this, Fri and Sat evening performances begin at 7:30 pm and honestly you shouldn't miss this one.  Not only am I still singing the tunes that the playwright, Peter Arnott, envisioned would create the documentary-style "play with music" but the subject matter is something I intend to learn a great deal more about in the coming days - it's THAT GOOD!

With the subject of the Bonus Army March on Washington, D.C. in the spring and summer of 1932, it delves deep into the emotions of the active participants and the general mood of the country that was wary of them and then overwhelmingly supportive when the administration ordered the active duty military to advance aggressively upon the thousands of protestors assembled in the Capital, peacefull.    Much of the text is taken directly from diaries and letters of First World War soldiers, newspaper accounts of the Bonus March, papers of U.S. military leaders, Washington D.C. civil servants, financiers, congressional transcripts, and member of the Bonus Army.  Peter Arnott deconstructs historical events into vignettes that move the story quickly through 14 years of history from 1918-1932.  The audience is brought into the experience with no separation between the storyteller and listener.

VETERANS OF THE GREAT WAR

When the first wave of soldiers came back from Europe, the nation turned out to honor them with parades.  The men in the army of occupation, discharged long after the Armistice, returned to an indifferent society eager to forget the war.....

The cold reality of the homecoming went deeper than indifference.  The veterans found their jobs filled by others or their farms lost to creditors and back taxes.....

The new members of the growing middle class did not come from the legions of veterans but from those who had provided support for the war.....

Countless veterans strongly resented the fact that civilian workers had prospered in safety, their pay increasing by an average of 200 to 300 percent, while soldiers and sailors barely subsisted on military pay....

When they returned, many did not get their prewar jobs back, and the men without savings could not take part in the great orgy of spending that followed the war....

Bonus Bill

The bill simply asked for "compensation pay" to correct the disparity between civilian and military pay.  When it passed in '24 the bill stipulated that a veteran would received his "bonus" in '45 or upon death - hench the nickname "Tombstone Bonus".  When the depression hit in '29, veterans were hit harder than most and suffered a great deal.  The official movement began to petition the government for early release of the bonus in Portland, OR in May of 1932 when 235 veterans began to make their way to DC with word of their journey spreading and growing the ranks from every corner of the country.  The majority of Americans supported these men, believing that they spoke on behalf of the entire nation, not just for themselves.  Patriotism was a hallmark of this campaign, not anti-government and attempts to portray them as sympathizers of or active Communist sentiments.  The effort also caused great concern from outsiders and the government as there was full integration of the races - acceptance based only on presentation of military papers and keeping focus on the goal above all personal agendas and desires.

It got ugly though, at night on July 15, 1932, the Senate killed the bill and adjourned for the summer with Congressmen resorting to scurrying out of the building via underground tunnels to avoid the more than 13,000 veterans sprawled on the Capitol lawn waiting for word.  Within days, whether concerned with public unrest or the "appearance" of Washington during an election year, Pres Hoover began plans to evict the marchers.  What followed was to be the worst public disorder the capital had known in many years and considered to be the closest that the US had come to a revolution since the Civil War.  Chaos and fear ruled the evening as Patton and MacArthur ordered their men to disperse the protestors with tear gas, bayonets and bullets - killing many and burning the shelters and all belongings of the fleeing protestors.  The citizens observing screaming "Shame, Shame!" and other supportive statements against the aggressing army and the government that ordered the actions - speculation is that this lead to Hoover's loss in the following election.  The G.I. Bill was born of this movement, another smaller protest in 1933 at the beginning of the Roosevelt administration was quickly defused with the birth of the Civilian Conservation Corps which provided employment for many of the protestors.

I copied most of the above text from the playbill and apologize for the plagarism but hope that forgiveness will be quick considering how much I would like to see that theater as full as my mind and heart are today for having seen it myself!

Thank you to Pepperdine with special appreciation to the creative team and all others that came together to bring this incredible story to our community.  Most heartfelt appreciation to those men and women that have forged such strong foundations and fought for all of the rights that we enjoy today.  Consider how many oppressive regimes would have washed, bleached and then burned this story from the history books!