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Twin Town High (vol. 8) |
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“In the Heart of America” confronts war head on
Wednesday 26 March @ 11:11:55 |
 by Lydia Howell
It’s been said, “Truth is the first casualty of war.” Art might be our only credible source for the deeper, unrecognized truths beyond Pentagon briefings and “embedded” reporters’ color-commentary battle coverage. Outward Spiral Theatre’s production “In The Heart Of America,” set during the first Gulf War, merges forbidden love, a soldier’s mysterious disappearance, family tragedy and Vietnam’s unhealed scars. Playwright Naomi Wallace has undeniable guts, digging into the psychological minefields of multiple identities, how soldiers are made and support for war is manufactured. Although the play was chosen over a year ago, opening night coincided with the start of all-out bombing of Iraq.
"In the Heart of America" at Loring Playhouse
“Art is supposed to interpret the world and help us understand it,” says director Jef Hall-Flavin, obviously troubled by this production’s timing. “It’s eerie and exciting—and I feel ashamed to be excited.”
The play balances between two intriguing duos. The soldiers, Arab-American Remzi and poor, white Southerner Craver, are unexpected friends and secret lovers. David Joseph Regelmann embodies Remzi’s brash assimilation into the “all-American boy,” splintered by race, family and sexuality. Nick Condon is so true as Craver, he’s as familiar as my own Southern relatives. Female counterweights are Remzi’s sister Fairouzi, given fiery life by Aamera Siddiqui, and Lue Ming, a Vietnamese ghost, that Kate Leo conjures with stunning power. The women are linked by parallel quests: Fairouzi’s search for her missing brother and Ming’s resolve that there must be reckoning for the infamous My Lai massacre in Vietnam.
“Fairouzi identifies with her Arab-American/ Palestinian heritage more than with her American upbringing,” says Siddiqui, calling herself “a global nomad” and drawing on her own life for the role. “It has a lot to do with a childhood incident that told Fairouzi she wasn’t American and would never be looked at as American. A hate crime. Her brother witnessed it. It had a different impact on him. He shunned his Otherness, concentrated on trying to belong. That creates a distance between them. There’s great love, but, also distance. That happens a lot in immigrant families.”
To director Hall-Flavin’s shock, Siddiqui reveals a similar hate crime happened to her brother who was assaulted, during the 1970’s Iran hostage crisis. “Doing this play, I realized what that had done to us.”
“We glimpse what life might have been in Saudia Arabia,” says Hall-Flavin, who had a Gulf War veteran Marine consultant for the play. “Words like ‘rag-head’ and ‘camel jockey’ were used. They’re the Enemy and we have to come up with names for them so they’re no longer people.”
“It makes it easier to box them. Easier to target them,” Siddiqui elaborates.” Easier to hate them. Easier to commit hate crimes against them.”
Although Outward Spiral is the Twin Cities’ GLBT/ gay theatre, homophobia is expressed subtly as an insidious undercurrent. Sexual identity is primarily implied and explored with a rare psychological sophistication. What’s absolutely groundbreaking is the exposure of how “masculinity” is constructed, militarized and brutally enforced on men. Wallace’s writing reaches primal truths as believably as the most manly film directors: Stanley Kubrick’s “Full Metal Jacket” and Martin Scorsese’s Mafia films have nothing on her go-for-the-jugular script.
The play’s fulcrum character is Boxer. Remember the “I love the smell of napalm in the morning” officer in “Apocalypse Now”? Boxer is THAT guy frighteningly fleshed-out. Galway McCullough gives a take-no-prisoners performance, in dual roles as: Boxer, the young soldiers’ Drill Instructor and the Vietnam veteran who led an infamous massacre.
“There’s differences between the wars [Vietnam and Gulf War I]. The most striking similarity in BOTH is that most bombs were dropped from B52s,” Hall-Flavin points out. “In the first war on Iraq, we think of precision-guided, laser missile, Nintendo and it wasn’t that: 90 percent of bombs came out of B52s.”
Both wars also “racialized” the enemy, he adds. Wallace’s play hits the core of war-fueling white supremacy and its logic.. Through masterful writing and achingly real characters, the play interweaves the contradicted sibling relationship between Remzi and Fairouzi, the complicated camaraderie between men, and the negotiations of power. Wallace’s interplay between the first Gulf War and Vietnam is sheer genius.
“It’s about empathy,” Siddiqui concludes. “Theatre allows us to understand different perspectives—as actors, learning our character—as audience understanding by seeing what’s NOT been their experience, because it’s lived right in front of them for two hours.”
Bombarded by 24-hour news, a darkened theater has the intimate immediacy reminding us that the current war isn’t a “reality show.” Leftist anti-war activists will see that foreign policy alone doesn’t ignite wars: entwined sexism, racism and homophobia are the ammunition that can’t be dismissed as “identity politics.” Hall-Flavin directs this rapid-fire play with sensitive confidence and a cast who holds back nothing—an explosive ensemble of intense individuals.
“Poets and playwrights often come out against war I think, simply because we’re involved with human beings. Art is the opposite of destruction,” Hall-Flavin thinks aloud. “You can’t destroy human beings if you’ve investigated them fully.”
I staggered out of the theater, overwhelmed with the weight of our dilemma, but sure of one thing: Our only weapons for ending war are blunt historical honesty, strengthened empathy and resistance to the de-humanization of others and ourselves.
Runs through April 12. $13-20 Thurs.-Sat. 8 p.m. Sun. 2 p.m., Loring Playhouse, 1633 Hennepin Ave., downtown Minneapolis. 612-343-3390 www.outwardspiral.org
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