Grateful American: A Journey from Self to Service(26)
The show was written for five or six South American tribespeople, but John wanted an epic. He envisioned twenty-five tribespeople in the cast, and he wanted them all naked for the whole show. We didn’t have anything close to South American tribespeople in our ensemble, so we hired mostly Caucasian actors from all over Chicago. We held rehearsals with our big, naked cast, put Moe wigs on their heads (we called them Moe wigs because they looked like the hair of the Three Stooges character), and painted them up with full body makeup. Looking back, this entire idea was totally misguided, of course. But we did it. We were a risk-taking kind of company, right? Sometimes those risks work. Sometimes they misfire. The wigs and the body paint were just of few of many misfires for this production.
We did our tech rehearsals, adding the lights and a set that had these long drapes hanging on the back wall that looked like five strips of turkey bacon. Another misfire. The show began. Malkovich thought it was great to have a big group of fleshy people onstage, and I thought, why not? But since the Hull House Theater had only 134 seats, twenty-five naked people onstage felt sweaty and cramped—and not in a nice way. Attendance was low, and having a huge group of unclothed people sitting everywhere backstage before each show created a surreal vibe in the company. One day I wandered backstage and Jeff Perry, my best buddy, whom I’d known since high school days, was sitting with his Moe wig on. He was wearing his glasses, smoking a cigarette, legs crossed, and playing backgammon, as naked as the day he was born. He casually nodded at me, and I casually nodded back. What else were we supposed to do?
Critics hated the show. Absolutely despised it. Savages went down in history as an infamous Steppenwolf failure. Today, it gives us all endless pleasure to sit around, fully clothed (thankfully), telling stories about all the nakedness, wondering what could have possibly gone wrong.
As AD, I searched for all kinds of plays—and my radar was definitely tuned for plays about Vietnam. In 1981, we were only about six years removed from the American withdrawal from Saigon.
I’d been talking with Moira’s two brothers, Mac Harris and Arthur Harris, and to Jack Treese, the husband of Moira’s sister Amy, about their days in combat. The more we talked, the more I received a personal education about how bravely our country’s veterans had fought and how poorly they were treated when they returned home. I came to see how our country had turned its back on the returning warriors and how that war still divided us. It was a shameful period in our nation’s history, and many Vietnam veterans had simply disappeared into the shadows, not wanting to talk.
Jack, the combat medic, was nineteen years old when he served as a member of the Second Battalion 502nd Airborne Infantry. From July 3, 1967, to March 12, 1968, he saw 245 days of combat and survived some extremely difficult battles. He told me how he’d been so happy to be coming home before landing in San Francisco and seeing protests right in the airport. Glancing down at his uniform, he realized he was in hostile territory on American soil, so he went into the airport bathroom, took off his uniform, and put on civilian clothes for fear of being spit on or screamed at. Like so many of our Vietnam veterans, there was no “welcome home” for him.
Jack would go on to stay in the army for twenty-two years. He came from a difficult family environment, and joining the army as a young man gave him structure, discipline, and a home. It was always tough for him to recall the hostile reception our veterans received when returning from Vietnam, although I think for Jack and others who continued their service post-Vietnam, their transition was less difficult than for those who came home and immediately went back to civilian life. Somehow the culture shock wasn’t as severe for those who continued to serve alongside fellow combat veterans. Years later, on a gray and misty September morning, he and I would travel to Washington, DC, where he would visit the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall for the first time. I watched him trace the names of two of his fallen comrades with a pencil and a thin piece of paper. It was a quiet and somber moment of reflection for Jack that I’ll always remember.
Arthur told me he’d come back from Vietnam a changed man. Before he deployed, he had trained at helicopter school at Fort Wolters in Texas. He was an excellent pilot who survived many combat missions in Vietnam as well as a crash during training that gave him a banged-up hip that troubles him to this day. From 1971 to 1972 he served as a warrant officer second class with Delta Company and Bravo Company, 229th Assault Helicopter Battalion, First Cavalry Division out of Bien Hoa, Vietnam, enduring more than eight hundred combat hours as a helicopter pilot. He’d seen and experienced terrible moments during the war, one hot zone after another, and when he returned from Vietnam, for many years he had difficulty shaking away the memories. In fact, even today, talk to Arthur about Vietnam and it’s as if it were yesterday; even the smallest details are burned into his memory—his mind totally sharp regarding his days in the war zone. After Vietnam, he went back to college and flew for the Illinois National Guard for a while. But adjusting to life outside combat did not come easy. He married, but as time went on he struggled, he drank more and more, and eventually he became estranged from his wife and daughters.
Years later, Arthur was living in a small place in Florida and, like so many of our Vietnam veterans, was having a tough time. Our home in California had a small guesthouse, and my wife and I invited him to come stay with us. He had served our country, and we wanted to try to help him get back on his feet. Arthur accepted the invitation, and once he settled in he started to attend AA meetings. He responded well to the AA program and also started to see a therapist. Over time, a trust grew between them. He started to share some of the things he’d witnessed in Vietnam, and healing began. Arthur also described to her trying to get his benefits when he returned home and how he eventually gave up as the VA had dragged its feet for too long. So, the therapist began to take him to the VA to fight for those benefits. After three years fighting red tape, he was eventually able to secure his long-overdue disability payments. Arthur planned to stay with us for six months, but with all that was going on, he ended up staying in California for five years. After that, he was able to use his back benefits to purchase his own place in Florida, where he lives quietly today.