RECALL: Act One

In February 1961, while America watches Cuba on television and tells itself the next war will belong to someone else, a dying military academy in Miami is still teaching boys how to stand straight, take orders, and become men.

Written by Academy Award nominee Bruce Davison, and once optioned and held by the great Al Pacino, RECALL is a funny, savage, deeply human coming-of-age drama about abandoned boys, broken fathers, old soldiers, Cuban exiles, secret weapons, and the first terrible lesson of history: nations do not only go to war with armies. Sometimes they go to war with children who still think they are playing.

Act One begins with Stephen Lishinsky arriving at Miami Military Academy, a bright Pennsylvania kid who volunteered for the brochure version of honor and discipline. What he finds is a parade field, a dying commandant, a school already being swallowed by the future, and two cadets handcuffed to a howitzer before morning formation.

Inside “A” Company, Lishinsky meets the boys who will become his education. Slouch is a Brooklyn-bred survivor with a cigarette in his mouth, a wound behind every joke, and a talent for turning trouble into currency. Bebop is a Cuban refugee carrying the murder of his father and the dream of taking his country back. Wheeler is an eleven-year-old officer with a sword too large for his body and a hunger for command. Sally Barnes is the commandant’s daughter, back from wherever she ran, driving straight through the gates with all the fury of someone returning to a home that has already become a ghost.

And then there is Commander Patterson, a decorated Navy veteran, drunk, wounded, funny, dangerous, and still trying, in his broken way, to protect boys the world has already thrown away.

The academy is collapsing. The boys know it. The adults know more than they are saying. Castro is on the news. Cuban exiles are moving in the shadows. The old munitions bunkers are not empty. And when Slouch pockets a key marked Bunker 3, military school stops being a game and starts becoming the first draft of a war story.

RECALL is about loyalty, damage, sacrifice, performance, class, country, boyhood, and the machinery that turns fear into patriotism. It is about the lie adults tell boys when they call obedience honor, and the moment those boys discover the rifles are real.

Starring Alan Rosenberg, Carson Bolde, Stone Garcia, Wesley Kimmel, Dan Lauria, Kensington Tallman, Roxton Garcia, Bruce Davison, Luca Diaz, Amari O’Neil, Amir O’Neil, David Errigo Jr., Zeke Alton, Gian Franco Rodriguez, Miki Yamashita, Nemil Mudvari, Sofia D’Marco, and Ashley Ciarra.

A portion of proceeds from RECALL will benefit the National Veterans Foundation and the Lifeline for Vets. To support NVF or speak with a Veteran who understands, visit https://nvf.org or call 888-777-4443.

Produced by Table Read Podcast and Manifest Media Productions, LLC.

Executive Produced by Jack Levy, Shaan Sharma, and Mark Knell.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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