“What’s Up, LA!” – The Letters Project 2

Leilani Squire & Karl Risinger discuss The Letters Project 2: Connections Beyond Time

Programs & Projects

Military Family
Staged Readings

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The curtain closed on the Military Family Staged Readings Project last Wednesday, April 29, with the reading of our final of six plays written by Veterans and Veteran family members.

Thank you to all the actors, directors, and creative team.
Thank you to all who came to experience the plays, live or virtually, and engaged in the community of dialogue.
Thank you to all who supported this project behind the scenes.
Thank you to our sponsors.
And, Thank you to the playwrights who gave their all for us to witness.

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The Letters Project 2

ArtsUP! LA’s Veterans Empowerment Theatre and Returning Soldiers Speak Present the World Premiere of

The Letters Project 2:
Connections Beyond Time

June 19 – June 28, 2026
at the Blue Door Theater in Culver City

PURCHASE TICKETS HERE

Purchase Tickets
The Letters Project 2

Journal

Featured image for “Dusk Woman”

Dusk Woman

Sitting on the dock of the bay. Wasting time, watching the tide roll in and roll back out again. The girl sits at the end of the fishing pier, framed in the golden late afternoon light of a setting sun. The artist can’t tell if she is twenty four or fourteen, but he thinks maybe it says more about him than it does about her.

Kenneth Klemm

Featured image for “Letters from My Father”

Letters from My Father

It was hard to imagine saving too much from my past when there were so many other things I was told to keep. But that’s another story. The story I have to tell today is about something else my mother kept: the dozens of letters she received from my father as he served in WWII.

Cherielyn Ferguson

Featured image for “This Is War?”

This Is War?

It’s 1953, just a few weeks after having completed intense advanced infantry training with the 511th Airborne at Ft. Campbell KY., and I find myself on a Navy vessel together with thousands of troops on the way to Korea to fight in a war. About two-thirds of the way there, we are awakened by loud speakers blasting away and saying the following: “Good news men, the South Korean government has just announced after several failed attempts, that a cease fire has been reached and the fighting is over.” We all look at each other and wonder out loud.

Lester Probst

Featured image for “The Power and Necessity of Community”

The Power and Necessity of Community

During the Wall of Remembrance portion of Grief Dialogues: Memorial Day, something cracked open when I stepped onto the dimly lit stage. Another world slipped into the space of Ensemble Studio Theater/LA—the same space where I have stood, walked, and talked so many times before. But this time was different.

Leilani Squire

Our Mission

We believe in the transformative power of story.

Through dialogue, workshop, and performance, veterans, first responders, and their families gain new understanding about themselves and the world around them.

Empowered, they seek integration back into the community, and at the same time the community gains new perspective and understanding about what it means to serve. 

Group photo
Cast from ACROSS TIME: LOVE & HUMANITY DURING WAR.

Our Approach

Since the inception of Returning Soldiers Speak, we have held the belief that a neutral space allows our veterans, first responders, and their families to express their views and stories without fear of being judged or rejected. If we had said, “We are a liberal organization,” then the veteran with conservative views might have turned away. If we had said, “We are a conservative organization,” then the veteran with liberal views might have fled. It does not matter to us if the veteran’s views are to the left or to the right or in the middle of the political spectrum.
What has always mattered is that we offer a safe place for veterans to write their stories, and a venue for them to tell their stories, to speak their truths.