The Victory Garden Plays
By Tara Meddaugh
While tending to Victory Gardens which grow, flourish and die on the home front during World War 2, children, parents and spouses struggle with their own new realities of love, life and death.
Casting Options:
Large Cast: 1 female child, 7 female, 4 male
Smaller Cast/Doubling Options:
1) 1 female child, 4 female, 3 male
2) 1 female child, 2 female, 2 male
Running time:
Approximately 1 hour 15 minutes
Genre: Drama/Comedy/1940s
Description:
While soldiers fight abroad in WW2, those remaining on the Homefront strive to make a difference by creating Victory Gardens, supplementing limited food supply. But the pressures on the home front extend much further than simply growing produce. A child worries her failing rooftop garden is an omen of misfortune for her father’s return from a POW camp. An infertile woman throws her purpose into feeding neighborhood families. A wealthy man whose chemical plant is commissioned by the government for war purposes struggles with how to leave a meaningful legacy not tainted with warfare. These stories, and more, are given light in The Victory Garden Plays, a series of 7 vignettes chronicling people’s journeys with their new realities of love, growth, life and death.
This is a play composed of 5 10-minute plays with 2 actors in each play, as well as 2 monologue plays (5-10 minutes each). Below are the movements of the play, along with the cast list. While the play is designed as a whole, each movement stands on its own as a complete short play. Movements therefore may be performed individually as 10-minute plays or short monologue plays.
Great for: large casts, vignette style plays, 10-minute plays, historical plays, victory garden, discussions
MOVEMENT BREAKDOWN:
Movement 1: RUBY AND MILLIE & The Dying Cucumbers (1 female, 8-12 yo, 1 female 15-20 yo)
While her father is in a POW Camp, Young Ruby is proud to find purpose being in charge of the rooftop victory garden at their apartment building. But when she discover some of her vegetables are dying, she fears this may be a harbinger of bad news for her father.
Movement 2: RUTH AND HARRY & The Dinner Party (1 female 20s, 1 male 20s)
While preparing for a dinner party, Ruth reveals a well-kept secret to her husband, which jeopardizes their future to grow a family.
Movement 3: GRACE AND ALBERT & His First English words (1 female,40s-60s). Monologue.
Catholic Widow, Grace, takes in a Jewish Refugee who doesn’t speak English. She knows very little of his experience, culture, or language and strives to find a way to connect.
Movement 4: LESTER AND JERRY & The Chemical Plant (2 male, 40s-60s)
Lester meets with his old friend and struggles to reconcile morals with a government “request” for using his Chemical Plant.
Movement 5: ALICE AND RICHARD AYERS & The Adventure of the Seed (1 female, 18-20s)
Alice, a young newlywed, mails a letter to her husband, who is stationed in the army overseas. The letter carries more than her love, worries and hopes for the future, but also an important revelation which she believes will bring him home safely.
Movement 6: DOROTHY AND JOHN & The Wooden Crate with Splinters (1 female 20s-30s, 1 male 20s-30s)
After WWII has ended, an old friend helps recently widowed Dorothy dismantle her victory garden. While both harbor deep loneliness which they seek to mend, their pain and loss make it difficult to carve out a path of connection.
Movement 7: RUBY and MILLIE & the Old Chemical Plant (2 female, 60s)
In the final movement of the play, we return to the sisters who opened our story, Ruby and Millie. We fast forward 50+ years. The war is a distant memory while Seinfeld blares on the tv at night and Ruby and Millie live side-by-side at the same senior apartments, tending to their community garden. Neither one can imagine life without the other by her side. But now they struggle with decisions that may, for the first time in 60+ years, take them very far away from each other.
CLICK HERE FOR A FREE EXCERPT OF THE VICTORY GARDEN PLAYS.
Click below for a digital copy of the piece, The Victory Garden Plays.
PLAYWRIGHT’S NOTES
In the early 1940s, Victory Gardens sprang up around the US in an effort for Americans at home to lend their support to armed forces and allies fighting overseas in WWII. These gardens of vegetables and fruits, grown anywhere from city rooftops and vacant lots to baseball fields and school yards, contributed an estimated 9-10 million tons of produce to Americans on the homeland, making up around 40% of all fruits and vegetables eaten in the US by 1942. By consuming produce grown within their own communities, not only were Americans able to supplement their rations and eat better, but more commercially grown and canned produce was now freed up to be shipped to the troops overseas. Westchester County in New York State had a very successful Victory Garden program, where in Pelham alone, there were around 1000 Victory Gardens and the community produced 88 tons of produce in 1943. When the war ended, so did the push for community gardens which were often left abandoned as the baby boom era began and neighborhoods returned to more pre-war structures.
When I began researching Victory Gardens as the backdrop for this play, I was drawn in by their momentum of purpose, loss and renewal. While the gardens transitioned through these phases, so did the lives of those who tended to them during the war. From children to newlyweds to widows—a Victory Garden could embody empowerment, guilt, connection, home, fertility, legacy, death, life. In our play, we give voice to seven narratives, each offering a glimpse into the lives of those on the home front who were touched by these elements during WWII.
Photos from WCT Production directed by Nathan Flower, starring Nicole Arcieri, Rubén Caballero, Missy Flower, Anne Glickman, Pat McGuinness, Giovanni Pucci, Fiamma Seelye, Jess Valente and Mika Wurf; Costume Design by Georgia Evans. Photos by Gregory Perry Photography.
