THE SHOW: Heartland, a world premiere drama by two local playwrights, Anita Simons and Lauren Simon. This is their second collaboration (Ladies First was their first). Heartland won accolades at the Dayton Playhouse FutureFest 2008 and the 2008 Long Beach Playhouse New Works Festival. Simons and director Eric Bishop met last year at the Patté Awards, where Bishop, chair of the Mira Costa College Performing and Media Arts Department, was honored as Best Director. That initial connection proved felicitous, and the two writers were in residence at the college during the rehearsal period, tweaking the play as they saw it unfold onstage. The resulting production has been entered into this year's Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival.

THE BACKSTORY: Intrigued and stirred by a PBS documentary, the playwrights delved into the treatment of German-Americans during World War II, a dark and obscure chapter of our history. We are all familiar with the internment of Japanese-Americans. But what was done to German-Americans has gotten much less attention. From 1941-1945, the U.S. government imprisoned nearly 11,000 German-Americans, who were forced to face interrogation, internment and deportation. Some were held in captivity even after the war. All told, more than 1000 German-Americans, including their American-born children, were expatriated to Germany against their will. Two of those children, now middle-aged, came to speak to the audience after the Saturday matinee performance of Heartland, which tackles yet another little-known piece of our history. From 1943-1946, in an effort to "re-educate" prisoners of war in the American way of life, German POWs (along with those from Italy and Japan) were permitted to do factory and farmwork in the heartland. These wartime activities are conflated in the new play.

THE STORY: The drama is set in 1945, on a family-owned Wisconsin dairy farm. Shortly before the father died, he arranged to participate in the POW work program. This was a welcome relief for the Gertzoffs, since the widowed mother Berta and her two daughters can't handle all the work, and the son is too young for all but the most basic tasks. Sonya, the eldest, is hellbent on keeping the farm running, as her father would have wanted. Emma is less grounded, more starry-eyed, her interests leaning to "hep-talk" and swing dancing more than milking and farming. Enter POWs Gunter and Rolf. Young Peter is fascinated by the Germans, goose-stepping behind them and drawing swastikas on his arm. Soon, the swastikas are forcibly painted on him by angry, taunting neighborhood kids. As the hard-working German soldiers become more indispensable to the farm and the family, they're welcomed into the household, to the delight of Emma, who's entranced by Rolf, but to the increasing dismay of the busybody neighbor Peggy and her self-righteous husband, Jack. Pretty soon, the FBI shows up in the middle of the night, removing the Germans and dragging off Berta, first to a detention center, then a "family camp," and finally threatening deportation to Germany. Instead of following her to the camp, her children decide to stick it out on the farm. This decision has repercussions for everyone.

THE PLAYERS/THE PRODUCTION: The story is shocking; for me it was revelatory. Deporting our own citizens? Who knew? But the play, while conveying historical information, is not in the slightest didactic. It's a family story, a tale of survival and acquiescence, of racism, of neighbor against neighbor. Not a pretty picture, or an attractive chapter of American history. But the characters are well drawn, the dialogue is consistently credible, and the German language and accents are excellently conveyed (thanks to dialect coach Gedaly Guberek and German consultant Christine Agresti). The talented students also had to learn a bit of swing dancing and concertina-playing. Very impressive.

At the helm is director Bishop, mining the emotional depths, using pauses to excellent effect, and making the most of his students' abilities. Under his taut and expert direction, each carves out a credible character. Mary Tarantino-Relator is the stalwart mother, always protecting her children and believing everything will be all right -- until it isn't, and she snaps. Amanda Dane is wonderful as the tomboyish, no-nonsense older daughter Sonya, who works like a dog (or here, like a man) and doggedly wants only to honor her father's memory and desires. Blonde and feminine Emma is a dreamer, and Rolf (engaging Ryan Kidd) shares that sensibility, and the belief that some day they can be together. Michael Philip Thomas' Gunther is downright frightening; with his blond, slicked-back hair, he looks very much the grown-up Hitler Jugend (Hitler Youth). Meg Johnson has just the right tone as the priggish, sanctimonious Peggy, and Bernard X. Kopsho (the only alumnus in the production), is perfect as the self-satisfied banking 'do-gooder' whose motives we never quite trust. Twelve year-old Teddy Blessing is a veteran of five Mira Costa productions, and he handles Peter's emotional ups and downs with aplomb (Bishop says Blessing is a pro all the way, in demeanor and preparation).

Once again, Bishop has placed the action on the stage of the attractive college theater, so the audience surrounds the often-intense action. The set (Dixon Fish) works well, but is a bit fussy in the frequent scene-changes. The original music (Christy Coobatis) is a tad overwrought at times, but the sound design (gunshot, old radio shows and music) captures the tone of the period. The lighting (Paul Canaletti, Jr.) is effective, and the costumes (Roslyn Lehman) nicely define character.

It's a testament to the writers, director and actors that we get completely caught up in the characters' lives, while at the same time, we're appalled by what their story tells us about our own history. I hope the play has a long and fruitful future.

THE LOCATION: Mira Costa College, through 11/23

"Heartland," a play about persecution of German-Americans during World War II, emerged as a frontrunner for honors Saturday, July 26, in the Dayton Playhouse's 18th annual Futurefest.

Set on a Wisconsin dairy farm in 1945, the two-act drama by Lauren Simon and Anita Simons brought a little known chapter of American wartime history to light.

A play that can do that has already succeeded on one level. This one also proved to have a satisfying emotional range, clear characters and relationships.

Presented at 10 a.m., it opened day two of the three-day, six-play festival with a cast including Becky Lamb as Berta, a German-born widow trying to run a family farm with her two daughters and young son.

Two German prisoners pressed into labor on the farm as part of a U.S. government program seem a godsend at first. But the way the two -- Rolf (Micah Stock) and Gunther (James Goodwin) -- blend so easily in with the family attracts the suspicions of closed-minded neighbors and the banker who holds the mortgage. The FBI arrives one night to haul Berta away to jail as a suspected spy and the family's fortunes soon descend.

"I thought the Nazis and Japs were our enemies, not our own government," says eldest daughter Sonya (Allison Husko), who strives to hold onto the family home.

Director Linda Dunlevy's casting and her actors' convincing German accents were both effective, but the staging was an awkward mix of dramatic reading and free-ranging performance. Lines spoken downward into open scripts were sometimes lost.

Sweet romance blossoms between daughter Emma (Sarah Gomes) and Rolf. The cast also included John Bukowski as the banker, whose villainy prompted hisses from the audience, Stefanie Pratt as busybody Peggy and Casey Dayton Blunt as son Peter.

Futurefest will continue with two more plays on Sunday, July 27, at the Playhouse, 1301 E. Siebenthaler Ave. Tickets are $16. Call (937) 424-8477.