‘The Hello Girls’ tunefully honors America’s first female soldiers at Syracuse Stage

In 1918, under the order of General John J. Pershing, the Signal Corps Female Telephone Operators Unit sailed for France to run switchboard operations on the frontlines during the twilight of the First World War.

Nearly 100 years later, over a long Memorial Day weekend, theatre director and playwright Cara Reichel stumbled upon a documentary that told the story of these so-called “Hello Girls”— the courageous women who would connect 26 million calls before the war’s end.

 

“For some reason, it just grabbed me,” Reichel said of the film, which chronicled the history of women in the military. “At that time, we were looking around for projects that would center strong women characters and stories. And this particular story is an important one.”

 

She brought the idea to her husband, composer and frequent collaborator Peter Mills, who agreed, and the two began work on what would become “The Hello Girls,” a musical inspired by the heroic Americans who became the nation’s first female armed service members.

 

The show premiered at Prospect Musicals in New York City in 2018, marking the centennial anniversary of the real life “Hello Girls” tour of duty. A new production, directed by Reichel with reworked staging, orchestrations, and material, opens at Syracuse Stage on September 9 with a special free-of-charge performance for veterans, active military members and their families.

 

The theatre is partnering with Clear Path for Veterans, Honor Flight Syracuse and the National Veterans Resource Center at Syracuse University, and will host a vendor fair featuring veteran-owned businesses before the 7:30 p.m. performance on September 19.

 

In finding a musical identity for “The Hello Girls,” Mills drew from contemporary genres like ragtime and jazz, but also reached forward to the big band swing of the 1940s, developing a sound that is not so much a time capsule of 1918 as it is an evocation of a bygone era.

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