Talking With... Steven Dietz

Playwright of LAST OF THE BOYS

Conducted by Peter Bonilla, Literary Manager, and Shane Valenzi, Literary Intern

InterAct: As you wrote LAST OF THE BOYS, the American government was in the midst of its prewar planning for the war in Iraq, a war that is now in its fifth year. How did the impending events in Iraq affect the writing of the play, and how has the current war affected audiences’ response to the play as it has matured?

Steven Dietz: You write to your heart and you hope you write to your time. There was no Iraq war when I began this play. There was however an ongoing debate about Vietnam – no matter how covert each political party tried to make this debate, or make the issue “go into history.” Iraq brought this debate out of the shadows, but the timing of that did not generate the play. This story had been rattling around in my head for a dozen years. I was finally ready to tackle it – and, sadly, world events provided a visceral context for it.

InterAct: Though the play certainly plays on some of the emotions and frustrations brought up by the war in Iraq, is it too simple to say that the play uses one war as a comment on the other? How do you hope audiences will receive the play, and have you been surprised by their reactions?

Steven Dietz: I am not commenting on the Iraq war. I will, if you want me to, and it will be no surprise to you what I say – but that “comment” is not contained in the text or intention of the play. Any connection belongs – as it should in this place of ideas and engagement, which we call the theatre – to the audience and them alone. You can’t make a viewer buy your metaphor: you can just lay it out, and what they take, they take; what they leave, they leave. Audiences have engaged with this play in a very open, very vocal, very passionate way – on both sides of the political spectrum. The one point of agreement on Vietnam seems to be a near universal acknowledgement that it is a wound on the American psyche; a wound carried now for nearly forty years, and worn to this day by the largest and supposedly most-privileged group of Americans in history (the baby boomers). The lessons learned and blame bestowed will continue to vary, but the point remains: Vietnam refuses to be history. It threatens to be destiny.

InterAct: In the play both Ben and Jeeter struggle with their differing views on the failures of the previous generation’s leadership in sending them to Vietnam. Now Ben and Jeeter’s generation has sent America into a similarly dubious conflict, though the play is set before these events take place. Do you see this as the result of similar failures of leadership and example?

Steven Dietz: Young men die for old men’s folly. It’s been told before and here we go again. The blunders in Vietnam were catastrophic and committed by men (Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon) with personal military experience. The blunders in Iraq are catastrophic and committed in large part by men (Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld) with little or no personal military experience; men who had, in their youth, “other pressing priorities” – as Cheney so infamously said. No political party gets a pass on this issue. The blood is on everybody’s hands. I don’t really know how political Ben and Jeeter are in the “present” because they have not yet put the “past” to bed. Maybe they never will.

InterAct: One of the unspoken effects of any war is what it does to the wives and families of soldiers, exemplified here in the characters of Lorraine and Salyer. What is it that makes their stories so important, and how do you think their stories complete the picture of war’s effects on a country’s psyche?

Steven Dietz: When a soldier goes to war, his/her family goes to war. Simple and brutal as that. Until Lorraine and Salyer entered the play I had a closed circle of two men laughing, drinking, fighting and using the past to tear each other apart. Once these women, these loved ones and family members walked into Ben’s yard, I had consequences. The story began to ripple out and catch others in its wake. It began to have a life of its own.

InterAct: One of the more startling images of Last of the Boys has to do with Salyer’s tattoos, best described as an extreme effort at closure with the father who disappeared in Vietnam. When writing her, did you see her as in any way emblematic of the different ways we have of dealing with incompleteness and tragedy?

Steven Dietz: Perhaps she will be viewed as such, but to me she is young woman trying to piece the story of her life together. She is of the generation which missed all the “excitement” of the 60’s and was left with only its “fallout” – more Altamont than Woodstock.

InterAct: Does that generation include you as well?

Steven Dietz: Yes, it probably does. The guys a few years older than me went overseas; but the draft ended shortly before I came of age. I had no way of knowing then what a powerful, invisible line had been drawn by the hand of time.

InterAct: An interesting footnote is that starting in the next few years, the baby boom generation, many of whom, like Ben and Jeeter, still carry the scars of Vietnam, will begin to retire. What will become of them, and what influence do you think they will have on America’s social and political culture in the years to come?

Steven Dietz: Let’s talk in November 2008 and see what happens. The country is theirs now – in number’s terms. What will they do with it?

InterAct: Your writing, more than most playwrights InterAct has produced, has no real “genre” it contains itself to; your body of work consists of everything from vast political dramas (like God’s Country, produced at InterAct in 1995) to fantasies, mysteries, comedies, and intimate relationship pieces (such as Lonely Planet, produced at InterAct in 1996). How do you approach plays of such different style and content? Do they all have the same square one?

Steven Dietz: I just write the play in front of me, whatever that might be. I try to cast a wide net – both in terms of story and style – but it is seldom a conscious decision: sometimes it’s as simple as turning to a small intimate story after having adapted a large, complicated novel. Where do they all begin? With intrigue. A mystery or question. Something that gets under my skin and demands attention. An intrepid grad student once wrote a paper about my collected work and noted that all my plays are about “memory, identity and deception.” I thought this was pretty funny until I stopped and thought about it. I’m afraid he’s probably right.

InterAct: In the course of writing plays for more than twenty years, what has changed for you? Have some views hardened, while others have mellowed? Are there things that interest you now more than they did before?

Steven Dietz: When I started writing plays I had a lot of answers and now I write with a lot more questions. My passion for the art form is as strong as ever (and no doubt more informed than it was 27 years ago), but nowadays I think I am more candid about how my plays are made, and at the same time less certain of their ultimate effect. This is a curious and maddeningly illusive medium, which is probably what I secretly love about it. We learn and we fail and we work and we push on. Mr. Dylan of course said it best: “I was so much older then, I’m younger than that now.”

InterAct: As the first playwright featured in InterAct’s twentieth anniversary season, you’re the first I get to put this final question to: what is your take on the next twenty years, and what will separate it from the last twenty?

Steven Dietz: Playwrights imagine history better than they write it, so that’s a hard one. In my lifetime the world has gone from the rigidly ordered Cold War to what can now be truly called – due to evolving technologies, interdependent monetary systems, terrorism and refugees, global warming – a World Without Borders. And yet I still think America fancies itself “a country apart.” Perhaps of the challenge of the next twenty years is that of engagement: are we really willing and able to prosper in the “global community” which this century – and America’s ambitions and calamities – has wrought? For artists, writers, InterAct, the question is a kindred one: how do we debunk the myth of being an art form “apart”? How do we continue to engage a moving world in a traditionally reflective art form? How do we put change in context? Use metaphor as a point of entry? Gather people in a room to rant, recognize, engage and reflect? Perhaps the coming generation of playwrights will have these answers. I hope and trust that they will blow my generation of writers out of the water.

SUBSCRIPTIONS, TICKETS & SHOW TIMES

Performances of LAST OF THE BOYS are Tuesday and Wednesday evenings at 7:00 p.m., Thursday through Saturday evenings at 8:00 p.m., and Sunday matinees at 2:00 p.m. Subscriptions are now available for the InterAct’s 20th Season, ranging from $54.00 to $97.00. Individual tickets are $15.00 for preview performances, $23.00 Tuesdays - Thursdays and $27.00 Fridays - Sundays. Purchase information is available by calling 215-568-8079; by dropping by InterAct’s box office at The Adrienne, 2030 Sansom St., Philadelphia, PA; or through the links provided below. InterAct offers discounts for senior citizens and full-time students (with valid I.D.). Group rates are available, and students with proper I.D. may purchase Rush Tickets for $10.00 five minutes before curtain (based on availability).

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Last of the Boys
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