Bringing Untold Voices to Life: Bellaire's Take on 'A Piece of My Heart'

Though the Vietnam War feels distant in time, Bellaire’s Red Bird Productions Theatre Company brings the emotional weight of the war and its consequences to the present. A Piece of My Heart by Shirley Lauro, brought to life on the Bellaire stage, sheds light on the overlooked history of the nearly 11,000 American women who went overseas as nurses, Red Cross workers, entertainers and more during the Vietnam War. Scripted from the lives of real women, the play amplifies the voices of six women who journeyed to Vietnam with bright-eyed anticipation, only to return hollowed by trauma and silence.

Each actress served as a portrait of a unique experience from a different social background. Bellaire senior Camila Chandler played Sissy, a warm and lighthearted seventeen-year-old desperate to escape her hometown of Erie, Pennsylvania. Chandler was drawn to Sissy’s “closeness to religion” and her spiritual approach to healing after the war, which she found a parallel to her own personality. She admitted the greatest challenge was learning “how to portray such a heavy character,” but she ultimately found it rewarding to have “the privilege to tell [Sissy’s] story.” Knowing that “this play was about real women, and the dialogue is based on real letters they sent,” Chandler reflected, made the role “even more powerful.”

Wounded US soldier (Aiden Gross) treated by nurses (Kalyani Gifford, Camila Chandler, and Emily Brams

) in the BHS production A Piece of My Heart. (Photo: Keith Luo)

As the play unfolds, the women return to the United States only to find themselves unrecognized, dismissed, and even spat on by war protestors. They faced not only rejection from society but also severe post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and unresolved trauma that lingered long after their service.

Behind the scenes, Bellaire senior Richard Manne, the production’s tech director, shaped the play’s emotional atmosphere. In the pivotal scene where each woman reveals her struggles with PTSD, Manne designed the stage to slowly wash in reds and purples as the memories intensified. Manne hoped to convey the “effect PTSD can have on a person” and how it “builds and builds until [it] destroys” a person. At the climax, as the actresses screamed “I hurt too,” the lights shifted abruptly to a bright, sterile white – signaling the forced return to normalcy and how “veteran mental health was disregarded” by society.

Playbill cover of A Piece of My Heart performed by Bellaire’s Red Bird Productions Theatre Company.

A Piece of My Heart was more than a school production– it was a work of remembrance. Through performance, design, and storytelling, Bellaire’s Red Bird Productions gave voice to women who endured sacrifice, heartbreak, and resilience. The play left us with a simple truth: history lives not only in textbooks, but in the stories we choose to remember and the voices we refuse to let fade into silence.