First Look: James F. Bruns’ Fringe show: Caribbean Command

I guess I was “nervous in the service.”

But who wasn’t in those fretful days after September 11, 2001? So when the telephone rang just after the Presidential Mobilization Order came out and I saw it was a DOD number, I knew I was being recalled. Ordered to Active Duty for one year.

To Headquarters.
At the United States Southern Command.
That’s in Miami.
As in Doral.
As in, across the street is the Blue Monster golf course.
Which, of course, is not anywhere near the Middle East.

Thank you, for your service.
Right.

So what’s so nerve racking about that? After all, I was in the Air Force Reserve by my own free will.

No, it was just a sudden gulp in the throat, a realization that I was no longer in control of my life. That events, once seemingly so far away in the world, were now directly concerning my future. Or lack of one.  And how the “State” could now reach down and legally grab me by the collar, and I could just as easily end up in Fallujah, as in Florida.  Anyhow, I “survived” that year in Miami and continued my intelligence career doing “tours” in the SOUTHCOM theater, Belize, Guyana, Panama, Puerto Rico and multiple assignments to Key West, Florida.

And that tropical island, located at the end of America, is the location of my play Caribbean Command. It’s a drama about a small intelligence unit during those anxious years after 9/11 and then invasion and occupation of Iraq. A time of mounting casualties and stop-loss, when the military (State) was desperately seeking bodies to plug into the Iraq/Afghanistan calamity.

In charge of this fictional joint intelligence center is ANA, played by University of Maryland Theatre graduate Maria Ortiz-Marquez. Her nemesis is BRENT, played by Tony Angelo. Tony was previously another kind of player, the football kind at the University of Montana and is here making his stage debut. Chelsea Majors, a soprano who studied Voice at Virginia Tech and has previously only appeared in musicals, is SUZANNE. And Jennifer Esquivel is ROSARIO. Jennifer has taken classes at the Shakespeare Theatre Company, The Theatre Lab, and Capital Coaching Studios. She most recently performed at the Anacostia Playhouse’s New Works Festival in Visions/Revisions. This is the first Capital Fringe Festival for the whole ensemble.

James F. Bruns is a playwright born and raised in Chicagoland and now residing in Falls Church, VA. After 26 years in the Air Force Reserves, he retired and started writing. This is his fifth season at Capital Fringe. Starting with American Lit (2015) called ‘serious and intriguing’ by the WASHINGTON POST.  Confederates (2016) ‘a show for Civil War buffs and theater lovers’ said DC METRO THEATER ARTS.  Lancer & Lace (2017) called ‘a solid dramatic concept’ by DC THEATRE SCENE and last summer, Black Confederates, called ‘explosive and relevant to today’ by BROADWAY WORLD.