Gut drop: about that time I taught with war vets



Teaching the art of the monologue, working with vets, making my public television debut..all in a day's work


Ah, a nice serious Friday afternoon post. Let’s do this.


I check two websites with freakish intensity: Yahoo News and the Weather Channel. (My grand love for weather systems, photos, and charts will be another posting for another time.)

This morning’s news headline was this.

I closed the screen without reading it. A horrible reaction, I feel like my clothes should shout “traitor.”


My thoughts of war used to be ridiculously simplistic. To me, war was a horrible hell wrapped up in conservative wrapping paper and we should all stop being animals and give peace a goddamn chance. War was about politics and never about faces.

And then I worked with veterans last spring. I was teaching at Northern Stages in Vermont, a curriculum full of war stories and monologue writing, and during the second week of lessons veterans visited my 13 high school classes. There was the National Guardsman, fresh from his deployment in Afghanistan, nervous as he met me in the general office. There was the white haired Marine and rough Army Sergeant telling me they usually don’t talk to teenagers as they smoked cigarettes in their muddy Jeep. And there was the kind Vietnam vet with his briefcase full of war mementos, waiting for me to pick him up at the VA parking lot.

All of them were nervous: they were stepping back into high school to publicly speak about their war experiences. (Triple whammy.) When they asked for any advice, I told them, “None of my students think war has anything to do with them.” All the guys looked shocked, gave either a devious smile or serious glance, and walked straight into class.

I ate lunch with these guys. I drove across the state with these guys. I sat in class and talked with these guys. And we talked about war. Everything from training, John Wayne, patriotism, guns, gear, ambushes, shrapnel, humidity, mountains, bases, dogs, ice cream, IEDs, mortars, death, blood, explosions, PTSD, prostitutes, drugs, love, long hair, Kent State, Obama, Bush, adrenaline, divorce, alcoholism, guilt, and survival.

There I was, Ms. Liberal Theater Artist from Los Angeles who never heard anyone tell a war story, and I spent a week with people full of war. And I don’t mean that in a trigger happy kind of way but with humbled sincerity. As a civilian, I didn’t understand the explicit ways war stays with a person. That it camps out in the bones and never stops firing.

These guys hated war, across the board they felt all politicians were idiots, that their conflicts were pointless, that the cost was too much. And despite battles with the bottle, being deemed “unemployable,” and injuries that made trees enemies and legs throb in the snow, they all said that if given the chance they would do it over again because they have skills that can save lives.

That fact still makes my gut drop. What do you say to a veteran after that? All I could do was shake their hand as they left classes, buildings, and my car. I watched them drive off and I would go back to my apartment and try to write.

And I couldn’t write. Not a damn thing. And I took that job at Northern Stages because I knew I would be dealing with subjects of war, I would work with veterans, and I wanted to write a war play. What a goldmine of research!

But one year later, I still don’t have a war play because I refuse to write it. These veterans felt very few books and movies describe their experience with any accuracy. (Just mention The Hurt Locker to an Iraq/Afghanistan vet and tell me how that goes.) There is something profane about taking their stories, recording them, and making them my theatrical experience. It feels like a crime for me to write a war play but I feel a duty to hear the stories of veterans. (Surely you can have a philosophical field day about what a writer has the right to write about. But instead, try saying that previous sentence ten times fast, it’s a dousey.)

Since leaving Vermont, I’ve dreamt of starting a theater program for veterans. I want to give them the stage so they can tell their own stories, make their own plays. I want them to inform the public, I want us to experience these stories as communities, but more importantly I want the experience to help veterans live better, healthier lives. I want them to beat their personal wars, not fall before them. But there isn’t enough time right now. Not enough time to do the research, to reach out to nonprofits, to organize other artists. With shows and jobs and opportunities flying every which way, this remains a giant star on my to-do list.

And then I see an article like this one and I see the faces of war I know, my Vermont vets.  They are eating pancakes with me at diners, giving me funny glances at something a student said, crying as they stare down tenth graders, and I am ashamed I have not done enough. And my gut won’t get back up.

Check out this site to learn how to find ways to help vets in your area.