Bravo, Jay. Really fine work, IMHO. While we understand that a play is a performative vehicle, this one in print, offered for us to read, works. I want to read more. And I read it as one who lived and experienced the periods covered. The characters are of their time. Having known well a number of CIA and State people, I can vouch for how you've handled that conversation between father (Charles) and son (Bud) - I think of how many of us went to the streets and protested the culpability of our government - and I can imagine how that tension, between truth and lies, is going to play itself out as the play progresses. I very much like how you envision the play's staging; your choice of quotes, whose sources I recognize (thank goodness), is apt; I see them as ironic, given what follows, and, perhaps, a foreshadowing of disappointments and tragedies to come. Whatever we read or see or hear or do is colored by all we've experienced, and I am particularly interested in knowing how your play holds up against my life as I experienced in all those years.
An aside, I thought of Thornwillow Press in Newburgh, NY, as a possible fine press publisher of the play. I don't think it has published a play yet, but I can see your work emerging as one of its monthly Dispatch publications (letter press, limited edition), initially reserved for subscribers-collectors at three price points, and offered subsequently to anyone (I've purchased several). You might take a look (thornwillow.com).
So kind, Maureen. Thank you. Your thoughts about how the play will match your experience of those years is intriguing to me. Between the time I first conceived the screenplay and I wrote the final draft of the play (not counting a final, satisfying resolution of a long troublesome problem in the climax only last year) more than several years had passed. I often thought over those years about how people would respond to its historical element. The central historical context was "old news" to me, which I might think everyone knew as well. But when I first started getting positive (but unproductive!) responses to the play, it became immediately clear to me that most people reading it were younger than I: they knew of the era by reputation, so to speak but they did not know a lot and were fascinated to encounter the era and the complexity of its issues in such depth. So there are at least two kinds of audience out there for the play.
Thank you, too, for that publication idea. I'm going to look into that right away.
I had thought about noting, because of the quotes in the play, what you say about the responses of different generations. I’m glad to know that in the play’s case, “everything old is new again” to those who haven’t experienced it. I think, too, that those of us who did live through those years can experience something of them again, maybe more sharply, maybe more sadly, maybe more cognizant of how difficult it is to bring change. It’s how I feel every time I visit the Vietnam Memorial by Maya Lin (I used to write letters to the “boys” in my brother’s troop) or pass through Arlington Cemetery’s sections for those killed in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.
A year or so ago I met a young man, maybe 19, who heard me talking with friends about Vietnam. He kindly interrupted and asked, what war, and while I silently acknowledged to myself my own surprise when he said he’d never heard of Vietnam or the Vietnam War, I think he asked out of a genuine want to know; he was grateful that we shared our knowledge.
You mentioned the quotations earlier. Those from JFK, from the inaugural speech, are, as you suggested, pregnant with post-historical meaning. Beyond the most famous passages that most people have encountered, the speech is really quite extraordinary in its rhetorical sophistication. Ted Sorensen deserves much of the credit for that, as he does for Profiles in Courage. The speech had already achieved a level of irony quickly after the assassination and the onrush of the 60s. If one reads it without that post hoc lens, there is much to admire in its ideas as well as its rhetoric. I think there is then a double level of irony to be achieved -- what I go for in employing the speech-- by bringing both those lenses, the original sense of mission and its rapid ironization, to bear in viewing the decades since.
I do hope younger readers will feel educated, though not in any didactic way. The play, as we'll see, is quite anti-didactic.
I love this, Jay. To me, it feels both familiar (foreign affairs, Latin American misadventures) and very alien (American politics!). I have long enjoyed mid-century American theatre, and this feels like it has some of that edge to it.
Fantastic start! ❤️
Thanks, Holly! Needless to say (?) the complications and drama will only rise.
I look forward to it!
Bravo, Jay. Really fine work, IMHO. While we understand that a play is a performative vehicle, this one in print, offered for us to read, works. I want to read more. And I read it as one who lived and experienced the periods covered. The characters are of their time. Having known well a number of CIA and State people, I can vouch for how you've handled that conversation between father (Charles) and son (Bud) - I think of how many of us went to the streets and protested the culpability of our government - and I can imagine how that tension, between truth and lies, is going to play itself out as the play progresses. I very much like how you envision the play's staging; your choice of quotes, whose sources I recognize (thank goodness), is apt; I see them as ironic, given what follows, and, perhaps, a foreshadowing of disappointments and tragedies to come. Whatever we read or see or hear or do is colored by all we've experienced, and I am particularly interested in knowing how your play holds up against my life as I experienced in all those years.
An aside, I thought of Thornwillow Press in Newburgh, NY, as a possible fine press publisher of the play. I don't think it has published a play yet, but I can see your work emerging as one of its monthly Dispatch publications (letter press, limited edition), initially reserved for subscribers-collectors at three price points, and offered subsequently to anyone (I've purchased several). You might take a look (thornwillow.com).
So kind, Maureen. Thank you. Your thoughts about how the play will match your experience of those years is intriguing to me. Between the time I first conceived the screenplay and I wrote the final draft of the play (not counting a final, satisfying resolution of a long troublesome problem in the climax only last year) more than several years had passed. I often thought over those years about how people would respond to its historical element. The central historical context was "old news" to me, which I might think everyone knew as well. But when I first started getting positive (but unproductive!) responses to the play, it became immediately clear to me that most people reading it were younger than I: they knew of the era by reputation, so to speak but they did not know a lot and were fascinated to encounter the era and the complexity of its issues in such depth. So there are at least two kinds of audience out there for the play.
Thank you, too, for that publication idea. I'm going to look into that right away.
I had thought about noting, because of the quotes in the play, what you say about the responses of different generations. I’m glad to know that in the play’s case, “everything old is new again” to those who haven’t experienced it. I think, too, that those of us who did live through those years can experience something of them again, maybe more sharply, maybe more sadly, maybe more cognizant of how difficult it is to bring change. It’s how I feel every time I visit the Vietnam Memorial by Maya Lin (I used to write letters to the “boys” in my brother’s troop) or pass through Arlington Cemetery’s sections for those killed in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.
A year or so ago I met a young man, maybe 19, who heard me talking with friends about Vietnam. He kindly interrupted and asked, what war, and while I silently acknowledged to myself my own surprise when he said he’d never heard of Vietnam or the Vietnam War, I think he asked out of a genuine want to know; he was grateful that we shared our knowledge.
You mentioned the quotations earlier. Those from JFK, from the inaugural speech, are, as you suggested, pregnant with post-historical meaning. Beyond the most famous passages that most people have encountered, the speech is really quite extraordinary in its rhetorical sophistication. Ted Sorensen deserves much of the credit for that, as he does for Profiles in Courage. The speech had already achieved a level of irony quickly after the assassination and the onrush of the 60s. If one reads it without that post hoc lens, there is much to admire in its ideas as well as its rhetoric. I think there is then a double level of irony to be achieved -- what I go for in employing the speech-- by bringing both those lenses, the original sense of mission and its rapid ironization, to bear in viewing the decades since.
I do hope younger readers will feel educated, though not in any didactic way. The play, as we'll see, is quite anti-didactic.
Your talk of the wall led me to think of powerful Yusef Komunyakaa poem "Facing It." https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47867/facing-it
Ah, the play unfolds -- and also take on the world ...
I love this, Jay. To me, it feels both familiar (foreign affairs, Latin American misadventures) and very alien (American politics!). I have long enjoyed mid-century American theatre, and this feels like it has some of that edge to it.