A letter is necessary, in the opinion of Brother Augustine Towey, when circumstances require a personal connection to the word. “Demand,” he says, “is a strong word. But a letter demands expressiveness.”

Email and cell phones may have increased the frequency—and quantity—of communication in our lives. However, no one presses an email into a scrap book or bundles text messages in a ribbon for a keepsake.

In part, Letters Home From Niagara, a readers theater drama written by Towey, is a tribute to the joy of letter writing. More than the task of putting words together or even the exquisite choice of papers and inks, writing a letter is a personal ceremony. It includes the shaping time to collect one’s thoughts, the hopefulness of sending and the anticipation of receipt.

A packet of letters, dating from 1911 through 1914, was provided to Towey by Frederick Heuer. They were written by a student attending Niagara University, documenting his days on campus in the years prior to World War One. Heuer, the school’s assistant vice-president for marketing, found and purchased them on eBay and thought Towey might make good use of them.

A prime opportunity for Towey to do so arrived this year with observances of the university’s 150th anniversary. He admits it took more than one perusal to realize a theatrical life for them. “I took the letters,” he describes, “and I thought about them and I decided to do this…all we had were his letters and his name, Harold Kennedy. He wrote to his mother and his sister. So what I did, I created all the letters which they wrote to him.”

While Kennedy went off to Western New York to study, his mother remained at home near Poughkeepsie in the Hudson Valley. His sister, a student herself, went to Vassar College, much closer to home.

“The letters touch on what it means to be away from home,” Towey details, “One gets the idea that Niagara University was very remote at that time. It was modeled after the seminary model. The young men were kept at a distance from most life.”

He adds, “This young man is constantly writing to his sister for boxes of goodies, or asking for a few dollars from his mother. I have tried to write—without being maudlin—about the mother’s anguish at being alone in the house and missing her children.”

Little is found in the school archives, official or anecdotal, about Kennedy. School newspapers from the day refer to Kennedy’s participation in dramatic productions on campus, so it would seem his letters have been delivered to appreciative, maybe even deserving hands.

Towey attests that he did not change one word of Kennedy’s letters. For a believable world to envelop them, conveyed only by spoken word, he relied upon fact as well as personal instinct.

Towey states, “I intruded a timeline, which will be read by two narrators, to give us a bit of a sense of history. The timeline deals with small things—when this was invented, or when this book was published—because I wanted the focus to remain on this young man and the family I was writing about.”

A letter writer himself, Towey admits incorporating some of his own correspondence, attributing it to the characters he has created for these real life personalities. “Letter writing is a great skill which we have come to lose,” he observes. “I love to read the letters of Winston Churchill, Robert Frost, Tennessee Williams…or the letters of poets whose poems I enjoy.”

Towey, recently retired, albeit vigorously so, has of late turned his writerly interest to poetry. A chapbook of his poems, Anna, was published in 2005 and he has another collection he intends to see published. “I write lyric poetry,” Towey says, “which is short and hopefully sweet. But a play—that is quite a project.”

Towey believes that one kind of writing informs the other. That said, audiences might expect the individual pieces Towey has composed for Letters Home From Niagara will be nourished by his poetic sensibilities for concision and clarity.

Letters Home From Niagara is a work of readers theater, a dramatic form now almost as rare as letter writing. It is no more a limited theater than a bonsai garden is just small plants. It is a discipline with its own skills to direct attention to the strength, depth and beauty of language. It is a style to be used when the material requires a personal connection to the word and entirely suitable for Letters.

Brother Augustine hopes for a pleasant, informative evening for audiences. An incidental outcome might be information from the public about Harold Kennedy and his life after Niagara University. Perhaps Letters Home From Niagara might simply prompt someone to jot off a letter…the original friends and family plan.

Letters Home From Niagara, by Brother Augustine Towey, runs March 30-April 1 at Niagara University Theatre-at-the-Church (415 Plain Street, Lewiston). For tickets and information, contact the NU Theatre Box Office at (716) 286-8622.