About Savage Wonder
Welcome to Savage Wonder, the literary blog of the Veterans Repertory Theater.
The purpose of VetRep is to build a creative hub featuring veteran playwrights and world-class performers. By featuring and developing veteran writers, we hope to ensure that veterans no longer remain the most underrepresented group in American theater.
Why should you care about veterans in the arts?
Veterans have been exposed to danger, austerity, stress, task saturation, exhaustion, trauma. They have seen humanity at its most extreme – war, famine, drought, disease. They have experienced the emotions that come with such extremes – violent terrors, quiet fears, the weight of loneliness. Then there’s the dark humor, discipline, self-doubt, the giddy camaraderie. In short, veterans have a wealth of experiential knowledge that can make for wildly unpredictable, compelling, entertaining stories.
So what can you expect from the Savage Wonder site?
First, you can expect to be kept in the loop of our projects, especially our flagship podcast, called, well, Savage Wonder. The Savage Wonder podcast is a series of long-form, one-on-one conversations with that rare breed of veteran that is also an artist, as well as artists that support the veteran community.
You can also expect to receive a regular dose of literary content from veterans. The writing might be raw, it might be experimental, it might be hilarious, it might be a total failure or it might be wildly entertaining. Savage Wonder does not shy away from war stories. But then, it does not shy away from any stories. From the hilarious to the erotic, from poetry to horror, we let our writers explore any genre and any subject matter. We don’t care about what they write, we care about who is doing the writing - and how well they do it. Consider Savage Wonder the sketchbook where veterans can strengthen their literary skills.
And all this is delivered to your inbox. For free. And our intent is to keep it that way. But we also are a non-profit, so we would be lying if we said your help wouldn’t mean anything to us. If you would like to support the next generation of veteran writers and ensure that more veterans contribute to pop culture - from books to theater to comedy - please consider supporting us.
You can go the traditional route and donate - and we’re enormously grateful if you do. Or you can subscribe and upgrade to a paid subscription, where you will receive discounts on swag and memberships when we begin to offer those (full disclosure - we won’t be offering them for a while, but we will be offering them).
Regardless of how you want to support us, we’re just glad you do. Are you ready for some adventures? So are we. Thanks for taking this ride with us.
Christopher Paul Meyer, Artistic Director
PS - Are you a veteran? Do you want to write plays? Poetry? Novels? Subject matter and genre are entirely up to you. Reach out to us.
PPS - Know someone that would be interested in what we’re doing? Help us tell them about it.
Not sure yet? Want to dip your toe in the water first? Just subscribe. We limit ourselves to one email a day at most and we don’t sell your info. We’ll just provide content to your inbox for free and you can cancel anytime. But we’re making the bet that you won’t want to.
