New Play 'Shades Of Valor' Explores War, Race, And Shared Grief

A world premiere of a new drama is taking place in Winston Salem on Friday that touches on military, honor, and racial issues. It's also a story that's deeply personal for the playwright, Karen L. Lewis.

Shades of Valor centers around an event that took place forty-five years ago in Vietnam, when a young white lieutenant is killed by one of his own soldiers who tosses a hand grenade beneath his hammock while he sleeps. This mutinous action occurs frequently enough in war to warrant a term for it: fragging.

A black soldier is tried and sentenced for Marshall's death.

Shades of Valor is a fictionalized exploration of that event through the eyes of their mothers, Barb and Kitty respectively, who confront each other ten years later as they await the remaining soldier's return from prison.

Playwright Karen Lewis based the story on a real event that happened to one of her relatives.

“It was a big cause célèbre," she says. “I mean, the Black Panthers got involved. My cousin was, to the best of my knowledge, pretty much completely white, and the gentleman who did the fragging was a man of color. It was the first time a fragging trial was brought back to the United States. Gosh, Burt Lancaster got involved and he was one of the people paying for the defense attorneys."

At the heart of the drama is the gradual shifting of attitudes between Barb and Kitty.

“To me, it's a play about two mothers who have lost their sons in war, and lost them in very different ways," says Lewis. “But the realization that whatever blame, whatever sadness and horrors that are brought up by those memories, they really have so much in common."

Lewis says it's a complex story that she hopes will challenge people to question assumptions that they make about others.

Shades of Valor opens the 82nd season for Twin City Stage in Winston-Salem. The drama is directed by Brook Davis. The four-member cast includes Shelley Stolaroff Segal (Barb), Kathryn Mobley (Kitty), Garry C. Wadell (Daniel) and Clint Blumenberg (Rick).