Fool For Love - Sam Shepard

Sam Shepard, born Samuel Shepard Rogers the IV in Fort Sheridan, Illinois 1943, his parents were both teachers, and his father was also a farmer who served as a bomber in WWII. He spent teenage years working on a ranch, which we can see influence being drawn on for his formation of “Cowboy”  characters.  He dropped out of college to join a traveling theater troupe

He first became involved with Off-Off-Broadway theatre (also sometimes referred to as Indie theatre) in 1962 around the age of 19.

In 1976 relocated to San Fransisco where he became resident playwright at the Magic Theatre, where

Was on the Cover of Newsweek Nov. 11, 1985 after Fool for Love had been made into a film version, A Lie of the mind was on an Off-Broadway run and he was getting steady film work.

In 2001, he was cast as General Garrison in the film Black Hawk Down which put him back in public spotlight.

Joseph Chaikin, director, playwright & founder of a group called “Open Theatre”  is a noted major influence on Sheppard's works, the two having closely worked together writing plays Savage/Love & Tongues.

Notable awards include Pulitzer prize for Drama for Buried Child (1979),  Academy award nomination for Best Supporting Actor for his role of Chuck Yeager in The Right Stuff (1984),   Nominated for Best play Tony for Buried child (1996) & True West (2000). Won Multiple Obie awards (10) for Playwriting, new plays, Direction and more, across multiple works (12) from 1966-1984 (18 years).

Critics consider Fool for Love part of the ending portion of a quintet of plays written across 1978 to 1985, alongside A Lie of The Mind - in addition to what is referred to as The Family Trilogy, which includes True West,Curse of The Starving Class & Buried Child

Fool for Love written 1984, follows a lovers spat in an Arizonan hotel, as their outside dates/affairs get involved, when soon their relationship is revealed to be incestuous all the while living under the shadow of their same father.  

For me to address a play in which “Love” is such a central theme, I must first address my own stance and interpretation of love. Some of those among you may already know that I, as a person, do not believe in “Love” as a concept. That is to say that I believe that we do not come up with our own model of love as individuals. We are given one by circumstances we experience at a young age, primarily from two sources; the media we are exposed to, where we get storybook and Disney versions of love, and from our parents, which is often the biggest example of love we will ever be exposed to. And we do not get a new model of Love until we have to remold, rebuild, or repair a new idea of love after our old one is broken by our own contradictory life experiences. Often we may find - whether or not we realize, that this will again fall into the same model as our parent’s model of love, minus any degree of youthful censorship. We become our parents, & that which we do not become, we attract or are attracted-to.

I find this is also the case in Sam Sheppard’s Fool For Love where we can find a great deal of Eddie & May’s actions mirroring the relationship dynamic of their father’s & respective mother’s actions.

First off, in regards to their shared father: They both effectively take the same course of action, or at the very least they try to. This is in the sense they both attempt to follow the pattern of leaving their lover and eventually returning in a cycle mirroring their father’s actions. I use the word attempt in reference to May’s attempt to leave, which we observe during the course of the play, as potentially being the only time she turns away from, instead of accepting Eddie’s love. All the while we receive reference of Eddie’s history being more directly akin to their father’s and him being more successful in this pattern of leaving and returning his lover. We are even witness to Their Old Man attempting to make direct connection to Eddie when arguing against May.

As for their Mothers I find that the Woman in the Black Mercedes-Benz referred to as The Countess, plays a representative role of their mothers. For example, May’s mother followed their father to an insane degree, sneaking into yards, peering into homes, with a daughter being dragged in-tow. The Countess we might assume has been lead to the hotel by Eddie, who has claimed to have traveled thousands of miles to reach here. As for Eddie’s mother, The Countess is willing to fight for her man. Violently. As in, with a fucking gun. Just like Eddie’s mom.

• Do you believe Eddie's claims of traveling thousands of miles were truthful?
•   How do you define/ find the difference between a “Man” and a “Guy”?
• What is a "Fantasist" in context of the play? Out of it? And compared to realism in/out of context?
• Who is Barbara Mandrell? (The woman the Old Man claims to be in the non existent portrait.) How might she relate to the two Character's mother's?
• Who do you believe the Countess to be? What were her motives on being at the Hotel? Where was she/what did she do during the period of time between her two assaults?
•  At the end of the play where do you believe Eddie went Did he leave with the woman in the car? Did he walk off like his father once did? Was he about to come back?
•     Is this May’s first time not taking Eddie back?
•    Does Eddie have multiple lovers? Just the one? Does he leave for affairs, or does he seek more legitimate reasons for leaving?    
• What parallels can we draw between Eddie & Lee?

Martin Sherman's Bent

            Martin Sherman is a well known playwright and screenwriter best known for his works Bent and The Boy from Oz; an exciting novel made into a play and movie nominated for the Olivier Award, Britain’s version of the Tony Award.  The play Bent was Sherman’s way of exploring the times of the Holocaust working openly with Nazis, Jews, and more importantly the persecution of homosexuals. Bent was a nominee in 1979 for a Pulitzer Prize and a Tony for Best Play in 1980. Sherman along with nominations and high reviews won the Dramatist Guild’s Hull-Warriner Award. Later Bent became and major motion picture in 1997 and produced in 35 countries.

            Martin Sherman was born in American (December 22, 1938) raised in Jewish household. His first awareness in the theatre came at an early age of six when he saw the play Guys and Dolls staring Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne around the 1950s. His interest continued throughout his life and continued though college. He received a BFA in Dramatic Arts from Boston University College of Fine Arts in 1960. From graduation he went to New York and joined Actors Studio to continue studying the world of acting. There he begin creating his own works which dramatize “stereotypical white male heterosexuals” dealing with the discrimination of minorities whether gay, female, foreign, disabled, or of different religion. Sherman being an openly gay Jew found widespread fame with his outstanding dramatizations.

            Bent was first produced in London 1979 starring Ian McKellen as Max, a young gay man in Berlin. Max struggles through his life living off of scum with his boyfriend, Rudy, a silent dancer. Both are forced out of Berlin in order to survive in hiding during the Weimar Republic. After 2 years of living out in tents the boys are discovered and sent off to concentration camps.

            The Weimar Republican happened after World War I where the republics emerged from the German Revolution where they gathered in the city of Weimar, a city outside of Berlin, where the constitutional assembly took place. Weimar Republic then created a new Nazi government coming to power run by Adolf Hitler in 1933. The creation of concentration camps and discrimination happened during this period, where Bent is being placed in time.

            In London the play was considered very controversial and violent. It also gathered reviews that degraded that the homosexuals received worse treatment than the Jews during the Holocaust. The play Bent was then transferred to Broadway where it received excellent reviews and became a hit, then taking it up to a Tony nomination and higher to a Pulitzer Prize for Drama.

1)      In scene 1 why is Wolf being arrested? And why is his death important as an opening scene?

 

2)      What’s the significance of Greta’s song and does it give foreshadowing to a greater event?

 

3)      When Max meets with Freddie discreetly why does Max deny love yet begs for 2 tickets?

 

4)      What impact did you feel when the officers made Max beat Rudy?

 

5)      Play off question #4 - Does this affect your position if you were in a situation where it was a choice between death or saving a life to die for?

 

6)      How does the theme of discrimination and sexuality intermingle within the script?

 

7)      Was Max’s quick thinking to make a deal the best decision if it meant his life?

 

8)      What theme is portrayed through Max and Horst’s relationship? And how does it relate throughout the entire play?

 

9)      Horst speaks out against Max (page 66) calling him a Gestapo (meaning secret police of Nazis). What inference can you take from his truth?

 

10)  Max takes on the pink triangle, explain how his acceptance of nature and defiance against the Nazis ends the play?

Larry Kramer's The Normal Heart

            Theatre is one medium in which artists can express their passions and viewpoints.  Larry Kramer uses his play, The Normal Heart to bring awareness to issues that are important to him personally.  Larry Kramer was the founder of Gay Men’s Health Crisis and ACT UP ("Huffington Post"). This play is what gained Kramer his notoriety.  After his novel, Faggots, was published, he was widely disregarded as an extremist and offensive by some. As someone who is infected with the HIV virus, it is clear that his connection to the subject materials was a personal one (Green).   The Normal Heart is set in the 1980s and was originally produced by Joseph Papp in 1985.  It ran for 294 performances at The Public Theater with Michal Lindsay-Hogg directing and Joel Grey as Ned Weeks.  In 2004, there was an Off-Broadway revival. There was also a Broadway revival in 2011 that was quite well received, winning several awards, including the Tony for Best Revival of a Play, Best Featured Actress for Ellen Barking and Best Featured Actor for John Benjamin Hickey. Outside of the Tony Awards, The Normal Heart was also won three Drama Desk Awards, two Outer Critics Circle Awards, and two Theatre World Awards, among others. This production was directed by Joel Grey who had played the original Ned Weeks in its original staging. To continue with its activist agenda, the 2011 revival committed a percentage of each week’s profits to non-profit organizations, such as Freedom to Marry, Human Rights Campaign, and Friends In Deed (Normal Heart). 

            The production was rife with relevant issues affecting people of the eighties at the time.  Notes at the beginning of the play, which Kramer included, spoke to the media coverage of the Tylenol scare during that same time period, which included seven deaths. He compared this with the “gay cancer” which was spreading about New York with little to no media coverage.  This point was also brought up in the dialogue of the play.  Kramer also drew an analogy between the willful ignorance of American Jews during the German Holocaust and the lack of action by the gay community in response to the plague spreading through their community.  As the Jews, along with the general American population, chose to ignore the obvious signs that something was terribly wrong in Hitler’s Germany, the gay community and United States citizens at large refused to acknowledge the dark truth lurking behind the deaths amongst the gay population at the time  (Kramer).

            The Normal Heart serves as a way to ask many questions of the audience that are universally relatable.  Beyond the obvious issue of gay rights and dealing with issues in the gay community, deeper and more confounding inquiries are raised.  How is it possible to be true to one’s self with no support and great amounts of opposition?  Is it worth fighting for the good of a people who seem, not only uninterested in helping themselves, but who also give no support for those who are fighting for them?  Throughout the course of the play many characters act in a manner that is completely counterintuitive to the continuance of their lifestyle.  They not only do not act to help themselves, but attack Ned Weeks as he attempts to act as their advocate at great personal cost. 

Another running theme in the course of this play is that of family and its importance to an individual.  Is it possible for family members with vastly different ideas and backgrounds to love each other in spite of their differences or must there always be a compromise in order to achieve harmony?  This same line of thought applies to the role of government as it relates to its citizens.  Should social stigma surrounding a social group prevent that group from receiving government advocacy when lives are at stake? Does the power of information hold the key to saving lives, and if it does, then should government be given the power to play God in the matters that decide who lives and who dies?  Do doctors have a moral obligation to go to the media when there is a disease that could affect the lives of hundreds of thousands of people and is not being handled by government agencies? Should the doctors be exempt from negative retaliation in response to their advocacy? 

There is also the ever-pressing question of whether or not homosexuality is a disease in the way that AIDS is a disease.  Should members of the gay community be treated as second class citizens based upon who it is they find attractive and feel affection for?  Some of these answers appear obvious, but as Bruce faces the fear of being fired and ostracized from society due to the facts of his lifestyle, these questions arise.  Not only does he stand to lose his job, his benefits, and his means for making a life for himself, like so many others in the group, he stands to lose his credibility in society along with those who have already been stripped of their dignity and pressured into fitting a stereotype for what a man should be in the gay community.

In the end, the issues being tackled in The Normal Heart are just as relevant today as they were when the play was first written. In today’s society, should people treat each other with fear and derision due to their differences or embrace them as part of what makes us all human? 

1.      Why did Ned’s actions alienate him from his fellow members of the gay community?

2.      How does a difference in opinion on the manner in which one choose to live their life affect the way that they are treated by those closest to them?

3.      Given Bruce’s fears and worries as they pertained to his losing his career due to his sexuality, and his unwillingness to defend the lives of his fellow men, is his fear more telling of his personality than his sexuality?

4.      Why is it that the 2011 revival of this play was so successful on Broadway?

5.      What relevance does this story continue to have in our society?  Why do these same issues continue to affect people of today’s audiences?

6.      Did the medical field have an obligation to inform everyone of the severity of the situation, despite the threat of causing a public panic?

7.      Why is it that Larry Kramer felt that this volatile character was the best outlet for telling this particular story?

8.      Does the persona of the gay community prevent some people from taking gay issues seriously?

9.      Should government agencies be able to downplay the issues affecting a group of individuals due to the fact that it does not seem to be directly affecting the population at large?

10.  Is there significance to the similarities in Doctor Brookner and Ned Weeks? Do their personalities indicate something what it takes to stand by a cause, not because it is popular, but due to a moral obligation?

Source Cited:

 "FAQ." The Normal Heart. N.p.. Web. 5 Feb 2013. <http://www.thenormalheartbroadway.com/faq.php>.

Green, Jesse. "4,000 Pages and Counting." New York News and Features. N.p., 04 Jan 2010. Web. 5 Feb 2013. 

Kramer, Larry. The Normal Heart. Print.

 "Larry Kramer." The Huffington Post. The Huffington Post. Web. 5 Feb 2013. <http://www.huffingtonpost.com/larry-kramer>.

Sam Shepard's "True West"

OK, since someone next week has to come up with the prompt/bio of Sam Shepard for when we do "Fool For Love" I thought it would be unfair to basically steal their thunder.

The prompt today is fairly simple: Come up with three questions you'd like discussed (or that you think could be discussed) in True West.

Chicago

      Chicago is set in the early 1920s.  It is based on a play of the same name that was based on a couple of real cases from the time.  Kander, Ebb, and Fosse wrote it in the early 1970s.  Music was Kander, lyrics were Ebb, book was Ebb and Fosse, and choreography was Fosse.  All of the musical numbers were done in a vaudeville style and stood out from the rest of the show.  The main theme of the play is a commentary of the justice system at the time.  It was very much about scandal and not very just, at least in the world of female criminals.  It is set during prohibition, but there is clearly alcohol in the play, as well as jazz and other “scandalous” things of the time.  There were a few women around this time who murdered men and inspired the characters of Roxie and Velma.  In fact, the woman who wrote the original play was the reporter who covered these women’s stories.  Since the original 1975 staging, there have been several revivals and a movie.  The most successful revival was the one in 1996.  It did very well at the Tonys whereas the original production did not.  The original production was up against A Chorus Line, but the revival had competition as well, such as Annie and Once Upon a Mattress.  The movie came out in 2002 and stared Renee Zellweger, Catherine Zeta-Jones, and Richard Gere.  It also did very well, winning the Academy award for best picture that year, as well as several others. 

       John Kander and Fred Ebb were a songwriting team with many successful ventures in both stage and film.  They started working together in the mid-60s, writing things such as Flora, the Red Menace and Cabaret.  Chicago came later on in 1975.  Of their many works, Cabaret and Chicago are probably the best known.  They are also responsible for such works as Kiss of the Spider Woman; New York, New York; Curtains; and The Scottsboro Boys, with the last two being at the end of their carrier.  Ebb passed away in 2004, but Kander is still alive, though old. 

     Bob Fosse (Robert Louis Fosse by birth) was an actor, dancer, director, choreographer, and more.  He is most celebrated for his choreography, having won eight Tony awards for it.  His style was recognizably different than others at the time.  He choreographed shows such as The Pajama Game, Damn Yankees, as well as Chicago.  In the case of Chicago, he also helped write the book, something that he only did one other time, for Pippen, though his work there is unaccredited.  He died in 1987 of a heart attack.  He was known to have both heart problems and epilepsy. 

1.)  In “The Cell Block Tango,” the girls all detail what they did to get sent to prison.  Do you think they are justified in what they did?  Do they deserve to get off?  Feel free to discuss as a group or as individuals.

2.)  In “The Cell Block Tango,” Hunyak states that she is innocent, but it is clear, that because of her language barrier, she is unlikely to get off.  This is confirmed later on when she is convicted and hung, all while still proclaiming “not guilty.”  What are your thoughts on this?  Do you believe her?  What does this say about the justice system and lawyers of the time?

3.)  All throughout the play, Velma and Roxie, and Kitty later on, fight for the press spotlight.  What do you think of their tricks?  Do you think this is still the way things work today?

4.)  What do you think of Amos?  He is a very weak-willed person, as he himself admits in “Mister Cellophane.”  Do you have sympathy for him?  Does he deserve your sympathy?

5.)  What are your opinions on the circus/vaudeville styles of the musical numbers?  It is different from typical musicals in that it clearly isn’t meant to be “realistic.”  They are meant to stand out, but why do you think that is?

6.)  Compare Chicago to other musicals of this time period, including other Kander and Ebb works.  Keep in mind that A Chorus Line premiered in the same year.

7.)  This is set in the early 1920s, during prohibition.  Do you feel the musical accurately reflects the time period?  Keep in mind that it was based on a play about actual murderesses of the time. 

8.)  The original production was nominated for many Tony awards but didn’t win any.  The 1996 revival, on the other hand, swept the Tonys.  Why do you think this is?  Is it just a matter of competition, or is it a reflection of the staging, or is it a reflection of the times. 

9.)  Frank’s death occurs during the song “All That Jazz,” which is sung by Velma.  Why do you think they decided to stage it this way rather than give it its own song?

10.)  The original show opened in 1975.  How do you see reflections of that time period in the musical?

Harold Pinter's Betrayal

English playwright Harold Pinter (b. 1930, d. 2008), is acclaimed for his work for both stage and screen. His plays are famous for their subtext and the internal life of the characters' psyches, rather than their ability to simply tell a story. Pinter was a son of a Jewish tailor and grew up in a middle class neighborhood in London. During his youth, Pinter experienced some of the harsh tolls of World War II. He witnessed buildings being bombed; this led to his refusal to enlist in the military as his national service.

Pinter found his beginning in theatre as an actor. He worked in regional theatres for a short time before becoming a playwright. In 1958 Pinter released his first full length play, The Birthday Party, for which he received savage reviews that caused the play to close within a week. Pinter's second play, The Caretaker, written two years later, received significantly better reviews. The play revolves around two brothers and the struggles they face after bringing home a homeless man. In 1965, five years later, Pinter would write The Homecoming, a play about a wife leaving her husband to stay with his family. This play would be performed on Broadway and result in Pinter winning a Tony award as well as lead to his first marriage with Vivien Merchant. Pinter also began screenwriting around this time; one of his most renowned adaptations is The French Lieutenant’s Woman in 1981 starring Jeremy Irons and Meryl Streep.

In 1978 Pinter released Betrayal, one of his most well-known works due to its creativity and relevance to his actual life. Betrayal circles around the extramarital affair of Jerry and Emma; Emma was married to Jerry's best friend, Robert, and was acquainted with Jerry's wife Judith. During the course o the play it is revealed that Robert, too, was unfaithful. The piece touches on multiple concepts such as the difference in perspective regarding a married couple and his best friend. The play relates to Pinter’s life in regards to his affair with Lady Antonia Frasier who was married to a member of Parliament. After her divorce with her husband and Pinter’s divorce with his wife, Pinter and Frasier would marry in 1980.

In 2005 Pinter was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature but was physically unable to accept it due to being diagnosed with cancer in 2001. Pinter would succumb to the disease on December 24, 2008.

1) Throughout the play each scene is given a season. Do these seasons relate to the plot itself or is it just a random insert by Pinter? How so?

2) Why is Jerry throwing up and catching Charlotte so important to the plot?

3) Obviously, the play centers on the affair of Jerry and Emma. However, what other themes has Pinter factored into the piece?

4) William Butler Yeats was a very influential Irish poet and playwright during the 20th century. During his life, he was suspected of having multiple affairs while married to his wife, Georgie Hyde-Lees. She once wrote him a letter stating this: "When you are dead, people will talk about your love affairs, but I shall say nothing, for I will remember how proud you were." In one of his poems entitled A Deep Sworn Vow, Yeats says:

OTHERS because you did not keep
That deep-sworn vow have been friends of mine;
Yet always when I look death in the face,
When I clamber to the heights of sleep,
Or when I grow excited with wine,
Suddenly I meet your face.

How does this relate to Betrayal?

5) The game of squash is brought up several times throughout the play. Why is it so important to Robert, Jerry, and Emma?

6) Do you think that Emma and Jerry ended the affair simply because of their inability to meet each other in afternoons or is there more too it?

7) Casey is mentioned a few times in the play. Why is Casey important to the plot?

8) Why didn’t Robert tell Emma about his infidelities when she told him about the affair?

9) The Pinter pause is an essential element to the rhythm and depth of this piece. However, by creating such a focus on the subtext had Pinter created an environment where the characters can’t actually speak a simple factual sentence? For example on page 53

Emma: I have a family too.
Jerry: I know that perfectly well. I might remind you that your husband is my oldest friend.
Emma: What do you mean by that?
Jerry: I don’t mean anything by it.
Emma: But what are you trying to say by saying that?
Jerry: Jesus. I’m not trying to say anything. I’ve said precisely what I wanted to say.

10) Emma lies to Jerry about the speed boat and Torcella. However, it is revealed that Robert took the speed boat. Why lie to Jerry about it being broken? In fact, how many lies are told throughout the play?

David Rabe's "Streamers" and Tim O'Brien's "The Things They Carried"

David Rabe (March 10, 1940) is an American military veteran, playwright and screenwriter who first came to national prominence with the performance of his 1969 play "The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel," the first of his four plays thematically linked together as the Vietnam Plays. "Pavlor Hummel" focuses on the violence and barbarity of both the Viet Cong and the American troops forced to go to war. The second, "Sticks and Bones," is the story of a blinded veteran who returns to America from the war and commits suicide. "Streamers," the subject of this post, was the third. The final Vietnam play is "The Orphan," an adaptation of the Oresteia that combines elements of the Greek trilogy, the Manson family murders, and anti-Vietnam protests of the 1970s. "The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel" was awarded the Tony Award for its Broadway premiere.

Tim O'Brien is a American military veteran, acclaimed author of novels (his work Going After Cacciato was awarded the National Book Award in 1979) and short stories (his 1990 collection The Things They Carried, from which today's short story "How To Tell A True War Story" is pulled), and professor. O'Brien, like Rabe, chooses the military as the backdrop for his fictions. In The Things They Carried, O'Brien treads the line between fiction and non-fiction; the stories rely upon metanarrative techniques (the author and the narrator share the same name), temporal shifts to points of time before, after, and during Vietnam,  and the like to create a multivalent and polyvocal account of soldiers who fought and died for their country.

Discussion Questions: The Things They Carried 

1. For O'Brien, what are the characteristics of a "true" war story?

2. In the second section of O'Brien's story, he notes that

A true war story is never moral. It does not instruct, nor encourage virtue, nor suggest models of proper human behavior, nor restrain men from doing the things they have always done. If a story seems moral, do not believe it. If at the end of a war story you feel uplifted, or if you feel that some small bit of rectitude has been salvaged from the larger waste, then you have been made the victim of a very old and terrible lie. There is no rectitude whatsoever. There is no virtue. 

This is not a new critique; one can see something similar in the poetry of Wilfred Owen (in particular, his poem "Dulce et decorum est"), the short stories of Ambrose Bierce, and numerous other writers. Owen, like O'Brien, adopts a critical tone when he notes:

If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est
Pro patria mori.

Do you agree with these writers that a true war story cannot be moral? That the idea of a just war is simply a fantasy that obscures or masks the graves of those who died for their countries, and that nothing justifies the deaths of young men?

3. Much is made by O'Brien between appearance and reality; in fact, he says, it's in the space or lacunae of memory that actual truth can be found. He claims the following:

In any war story, but especially a true one, it’s difficult to separate what happened from what seemed to happen. What seems to happen becomes its own happening and has to be told that way. The angles of vision are skewed. [...] The pictures get jumbled; you tend to miss a lot. And then afterward, when you go to tell about it, there is always that surreal seemingness, which makes the story seem untrue, but which in fact represents the hard and exact truth as it seemed.

Is it fair to say that, for O'Brien, fiction is more true than documentary? If truth does not lie in empirical fact or the exact happening of an event, then where can we find it in war literature?

4. What is the point of the murder of the baby water buffalo? What does it add to O'Brien's story.

5. Speaking personally, I am the son of a Vietnam veteran. My father lost his leg in combat during Vietnam. He was a marksman; when I was little, I asked him if he ever killed anyone, and he paused for a second before saying "Yeah" in a way that made me convinced that he killed a lot of people while over there. I can speak from experience that something about that war broke him, or changed something inside of him. He doesn't talk about his feelings, or share them. And he never talks about Vietnam, ever.

Often in a true war story there is not even a point, or else the point doesn’t hit you until twenty years later, in your sleep, and you wake up and shake your wife and start telling the story to her, except when you get to the end you’ve forgotten the point again. And then for a long time you lie there watching the story happen in your head. You listen to your wife’s breathing. The war’s over. You close your eyes. You smile and think, Christ, what’s the point?

Do you think this might account for the reason why a veteran might not speak about Vietnam?

Discussion Questions: Streamers

1. Why is Richie's sexuality so important at the beginning of the play?

2. Every monologue in a play, if the play is a good one, can be seen to be a microcosm of the play as a whole -- the plot writ small, so to speak. If that's true of Streamers, how do you think Cokes' monologue from pp. 32-4 relates to the rest of the play?

3. Streamers strikes me as a play written in the style of realism; Rabe's subsequent play, The Orphan, is decidedly anti-realist. Suppose that you were part of the production team for Streamers and the play's director wanted to embrace avant-garde stagings (including, but not limited to: minimalist set; non-Stanislavsky-based acting; specific design techniques taken from early-to-mid Twentieth Century avant-garde movements such as symbolism, surrealism, expressionism, and so on). What sorts of techniques could you use while retaining Rabe's argument/theme?

4. What would you say is Rabe's argument in Streamers? Is it any good?

5. Do you think that this play would work outside the context of Vietnam literature? Could this play be staged successfully today? Why or why not?