A Few Good Men will be presented with one intermission.

Setting: Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and Washington, D.C., 1986.

A FEW GOOD MEN is presented by arrangement with Concord Theatricals.

The performers in this production are students in the Department of Theatre & Drama. The designers for this production are students, faculty, and/or guests of SMTD. Scenery, costumes, properties, sound, and lighting were realized by the students and staff of University Productions, the producing unit of SMTD. Thank you for supporting our educational mission.

Latecomers will be seated at a suitable break. As a courtesy to others, please turn off cellular phones and pagers and refrain from texting during the performance. Photography, audio recording, and videotaping of any kind are not permitted.

Special thanks to Lloyd Bertin, Professor Jason Fettig, Eastern Michigan University Theatre Arts Department, USMC Master Gunnery Sergeant Allen Page, USMC Sergeant Dean G. Keys, Western Costume Co., Capt. Michelle Day, Andrew Stanton, and the U-M Naval ROTC.

We thank all veterans and active service members for their service.

Aaron Sorkin (Author) is an Academy Award®-winning writer and renowned playwright. He made his Broadway playwriting debut at the age of 28 with A Few Good Men, for which he received the John Gassner Award as Outstanding New American Playwright. In 1993, Mr. Sorkin’s film adaptation of A Few Good Men was nominated for four Academy Awards®, including Best Picture, and five Golden Globes, including Best Screenplay.

For television, Mr. Sorkin created and produced the NBC series The West Wing, which earned nine Emmy nominations in its first season. The series went on to win a total of 26 Emmy Awards, including the prize for Outstanding Drama Series four consecutive times. For his work on the series, Mr. Sorkin twice received the Peabody Award and the Humanitas Prize, as well as three Television Critics Association Awards and Producers Guild Awards, a Golden Globe Award, and a Writers Guild Award.

Courtesy of Concord Theatricals

Rich, dark wooden desks, the warm glow of golden light filtering through rustling curtains, the fluttering American flag—these were my first glimpses into the world Aaron Sorkin so masterfully crafts in A Few Good Men, The West Wing, The American President, and The Newsroom. His dense, fast-paced scripts, set against the backdrop of an optimistic and patriotic America, captured my imagination.

When I learned that our Department of Theatre and Drama had chosen A Few Good Men for the 2024-2025 season, I revisited the play. This time, however, I found myself seeing it through a different lens, with a new set of images in my mind.

Like many of you, I find myself grappling with a complicated relationship with America today—questioning who we are, who we’ve been, and where we are headed as a nation. The world in the play, as I read it now, is no longer the hopeful vision I once imagined. It has become grayer, darker, and more monolithic.

As I come to terms with my own often disheartening view of America, as well as the state of our military and justice systems, I find that A Few Good Men still shines a bright beam of light on the relationship between service members and the concepts of honor, duty, and citizenship. In a country with a fraught past, a tumultuous present, and an uncertain future, the play challenges us to consider our own bravery in the face of corrupt systems, where even the smallest cog in the machine is often asked to bear the heaviest load. How might we each bear such a burden? What does it take to remain steadfast in our duty to our country when parts of it continue to let us down?

And yet, there are individuals like Joanne Galloway—those who continue to embody the promise of an America founded on an interdependent citizen-government. They remind us that we each have a role to play, urging us to honor our institutions and serve them with integrity, regardless of how flawed they may be.

The play invites us to question, to reflect, and to find the courage to examine our own relationship with honor, duty, and service to something greater than ourselves.

—Geoff Packard

Director’s Acknowledgments

One of the greatest honors of working on this play has been the chance to meet so many incredible individuals along the way, all of whom have become part of our team—our unit. The contributions of these voices have been invaluable in deepening our understanding of the play’s themes and creating a richer, more authentic production.

My deepest admiration and thanks go to the following:

Professor Jason Fettig

Captain Michelle Day

Gunnery Sergeant Amy K. Horta

Midshipman Silas Krajniak

Andrew Stanton

Judge Lisa Walsh

Professor Chelsea Packard

Professor Brent Wagner

Professor Tyler Brunsman

Professor Raja Benz

Professor Karin Waidley

Professor Jeremy Sortore

Izzy Chilean

Most if not all of us have heard of Guantánamo Bay, or GITMO—the notorious military prison on the island of Cuba for those believed to have been responsible for September 11th that has been in the news again recently. Over 780 alleged terrorists have been detained and interrogated there since 2002, many not ever seeing the inside of a courtroom, most released after many years of imprisonment, some moved elsewhere. Despite the prison “closing” during the Obama administration, some prisoners remain as do the troops who guard them. GITMO continues to be a paradox, a conflation of images and messages around who the enemy is and could be. Before Guantánamo’s post-9/11 transformation and its newest resurrection, it already had a full history dating back to the end of the Spanish American War (really the fight for Cuba’s Independence) and figured heavily into the Cold War politics of the twentieth century, most notably with the failed Bay of Pigs Invasion in 1961 and the Cuban Missile Crisis the following year.

This play takes place more than two decades after those events, in 1986. Ronald Reagan is president. An era of conservatism has taken hold. Huge increases in military spending, in part due to the ongoing Cold War born four decades earlier, drives a silent arms race and political jockeying in which the US and the Soviet Union vie for global control. And Cuba factored into the fear of communism as centrally as any country on the other side of the world susceptible to becoming a fallen domino—perhaps more so, as it sits mere miles from the coast of Florida. Here the enemy was believed to be only feet away on the other side of the fence line. This complicated history is the air these characters breathe, the water they swim in. Yet, although Guantánamo is a key part of the landscape of A Few Good Men, it is not the central story. At the core is the court martial—an exploration of the systems of power and procedure in a world still overshadowed by a threat of mass destruction, where public scrutiny and the limits of the law factored deeply into beliefs about how the US military was keeping us safe. This story is about who we ask to carry out those highest of orders and what, and whom, we are willing to sacrifice for our security.

The life of a Marine is often shielded from the public eye, existing within a closed and rigid framework of discipline and honor, marked both by brotherhood and hierarchy. A Few Good Men lifts the curtain on this world, placing its intricacies under a microscope for us to examine and judge. Peering intimately into the legal drama and moral conflict, Aaron Sorkin invites us to dissect the ethical dilemmas that service members face and compels us to question our own perceptions and judgments of a life dedicated to that service. Semper Fidelis.

We are in a new era with political and global landscapes in flux. Uncertainties abound about America on the international stage and conflicts rage; military conduct and the ethics of warfare are increasingly complex. Reflecting on these events of the past offers valuable insights for our now, challenging us to consider what we ask of our “few good men” during tumultuous times—about their duty and sacrifice and the human cost of service in a world that remains fraught. It invites us to have an open dialogue about the pressures and moral complexities faced by those in uniform:

Where are the ethical boundaries of leadership? What do we demand of those who serve on and off the battlefield? Who is protecting those who give their lives for this service? How do we reconcile these demands with our own moral compasses?

As you watch the drama unfold, explore with us the deeply human feats as well as the limits of military life. Challenge yourself to reflect on the ever-relevant themes of duty and honor bound to something intrinsic that transcends borders and generations and doesn’t only exist in this past.

—Maya Elowe and Shelby Alexander

Anishinaabeg gaa bi dinokiiwaad temigad manda Michigan Kichi Kinoomaagegamig. Mdaaswi nshwaaswaak shi mdaaswi shi niizhawaaswi gii-sababoonagak, Ojibweg, Odawaag, minwaa Bodwe’aadamiig wiiba gii-miigwenaa’aa maamoonjiniibina Kichi Kinoomaagegamigoong wi pii-gaa aanjibiigaadeg Kichi-Naakonigewinning, debendang manda aki, mampii Niisaajiwan, gewiinwaa niijaansiwaan ji kinoomaagaazinid. Daapanaming ninda kidwinan, megwaa minwaa gaa bi aankoosejig zhinda akiing minwaa gii-miigwewaad Kichi-Kinoomaagegamigoong aanji-daapinanigaade minwaa mshkowenjigaade.

The University of Michigan is located on the traditional territory of the Anishinaabe people. In 1817, the Ojibwe, Odawa, and Bodewadami Nations made the largest single land transfer to the University of Michigan. This was offered ceremonially as a gift through the Treaty at the Foot of the Rapids so that their children could be educated. Through these words of acknowledgment, their contemporary and ancestral ties to the land and their contributions to the University are renewed and reaffirmed.

06 – AFGM Program