by Gary Sinise
So I waited. Time passed, and the show finally closed in Los Angeles. I called again and repeated my request for Steppenwolf to do the show in Chicago, but the answer stayed no. Every so often I reached out and asked for any updates on the play. I didn’t press hard. I simply asked, particularly because the play wasn’t being done anymore. It was just sitting, waiting, unused. John still felt very reluctant to let anyone else do the play. He insisted that it was a play by veterans, and only to be done by veterans. Still, I kept calling.
In the summer of 1981, our revival production of Balm in Gilead was running at the Apollo Theater, so I asked John DiFusco if he’d like to come to Chicago and see our work. We flew him out on our dime, and he saw the play. It was filled with rawness and craziness too, and after seeing Balm, John changed his mind. Balm had given us credibility in his eyes, and convinced him that we would put everything we had into Tracers. At last, he decided to take a chance with Steppenwolf. In late 1982, he granted me the rights, and I started assembling the cast for our 1983–1984 season.
I talked to my brother-in-law Mac about what he thought about our putting on the play. He liked the idea and informed me about certain details I needed to make sure I got right. More than anything, I wanted him to come see the play. But in August 1983, he was diagnosed with terminal cancer. Mac’s manual for the army was published in October 1983, and that same month his promising career and life were cut short. He passed away at age thirty-nine, leaving behind his wife, Anne, and three-year-old daughter, Katie. The eulogy at his funeral in Pontiac, Illinois, was given by a dear friend of Mac’s who had also served in Vietnam. I had never been to a military funeral before. It was very somber. There was the honor guard. The flag-draped coffin. The twenty-one-gun salute. I have never forgotten it. Mac was laid to rest beside his father in the cemetery across the street from where he grew up. Lieutenant Colonel Boyd McCanna “Mac” Harris had truly lived a life of service to others, and his passing only put the cap on my commitment to do the play right. I wanted Tracers to honor Vietnam veterans such as Mac Harris and help tell their stories.
Something else happened in the month of October that also strengthened my commitment to tell the stories of our service members. President Reagan had sent a peacekeeping force to Beirut, Lebanon. On October 23, 1983, a suicide bomber drove a truck into the building that was used as a barracks for our service members, killing 220 marines, eighteen sailors, and three soldiers. I saw television reports about that horror a month before I was going to start work on Tracers. I had already assembled my cast, and I got calls from several members, asking if I’d heard about the devastating attack on our troops. It was a terrible day, and it reinforced my desire to honor our veterans with a great production.
Five weeks before we started rehearsals for Tracers, I gathered the ensemble to begin diving into the preparatory work. I knew we couldn’t do this play in any kind of half-hearted way. We had to fully empathize with and care about the content of this play, about what the veterans truly went through.
As a cast, we read books about Vietnam and discussed what we’d read. A thirteen-part series called Vietnam: A Television History aired on PBS, so we watched it together as a cast. We took Tai Chi classes to get physically fit. We traveled an hour outside of Chicago to meet with veterans who taught us about firearms, which we then fired so we understood what a loaded rifle felt like in our hands. On a few occasions, we visited the North Chicago Veterans Administration near Naval Station Great Lakes to meet with a group of Vietnam veterans, patients at the VA, who were struggling with post-traumatic stress, undergoing any number of challenges because of their service. As we sat with them, they told us about what they’d done and seen, and they spoke very openly. They shared their stories with us, their heartache and their pain. They shared the horror of seeing their friends die in combat, and the horror of coming back to an America that had rejected them and often treated them as pariahs. Many of the vets told us it was healing for them to talk. For us, it reaffirmed our commitment to get things right.
One of the final things we did in preparation for the play was head to a summer camp that was closed for the winter in the small town of Sawyer, Michigan. A staff member at Steppenwolf had a connection there and was able to arrange for us to use it. I wanted to create a “boot camp” experience for the cast, and we were able to sequester ourselves as an ensemble for six days, out in the middle of nowhere, to focus completely on building our platoon. As it was dead of winter, the camp was frozen, knee-deep in snow, and it would be tough on the cast, doing all that training outside. But it was going to be a great ensemble-building exercise, and as director I was going to do everything that I required the actors to do.
I asked Dennis Farina (who later became known for playing Ray “Bones” Barboni in Get Shorty) to be our drill instructor at the camp. He was also going to play Sergeant Williams, the drill instructor in the play. Before becoming an actor, Dennis had served in the army for three years and done a tour in Vietnam, and later served for eighteen years in the Chicago Police Department, burglary division. The toughest of the tough, Dennis woke us up at three o’clock every morning by banging garbage can lids. He ordered us outside to do push-ups and jumping jacks in the snow until we thought we’d pass out. We wore our fatigues everywhere and went on long hikes and marches in the snow. For most of that week, Dennis did his best to make our lives a living hell. Just what I wanted.
We were fortunate to have two actual Vietnam veterans in our cast: Dennis and a fabulous African American actor named Greg Williams. On our final day at the camp, New Year’s Eve 1983, we hosted war games. One of the ensemble members, Gary Cole (later known for his role as Bill Lumbergh, the nightmarish boss in Office Space), became our enemy. He donned white camo, hiked into the wilderness, and hid in the snowy forest, and we needed to hunt him down. We tried to simulate the quietness we’d need to maintain in the forest, not knowing where the enemy was hiding. Instead of paintball guns, we carried model rifles that looked like real M16s and little bags of flour. If we saw the enemy, we were to throw a bag of flour at him. Two of our guys became lost and wandered too close to a neighbor’s house. The owner ran out, alarmed, and demanded to know why our guys were sneaking around in the snow, carrying rifles. He phoned the sheriff, who came quickly, and I explained (somewhat frantically) that the guns were fake and this was just play practice. Eventually it all got straightened out.
On the last night of the camp we threw a party, one over-the-top New Year’s Eve bash. All the guys went a little bonkers after a week in the snow. Next morning we ate breakfast, did a workout, then read the play for the first time. This was the first time the cast had even picked up the script, and the first reading crackled with energy. It was awesome to hear it come alive. Our platoon was ready, and as a director I was ready. We headed back to Chicago, and for the next four weeks we rehearsed the play, my cast ever-investing themselves in the lives of these characters. Then we opened the doors to the show.
The play begins with a Vietnam veteran in a bar. People are asking him to describe his experiences. “What was it like? Did you kill anyone?” The veteran loses it, and things spiral out from there. The crowd was hooked from moment one.
John DiFusco came to Chicago to see the show. I stood offstage, watching him on and off throughout the entire performance. The play ends with a powerful percussive scene that turns into a sort of tribal chant, a song with all the actors shouting, singing, dancing a war dance, hollering the same one line, over and over again.
How does it feel to kill somebody?!
How does it feel to kill somebody?!
How does it feel to kill somebody?!
It was the central question our returning Vietnam veterans were asked. The image that sticks in my mind forever is of John during this song. He was sitting in the audience, his head slightly bowed, and when the cast started to chant, his hand raised in a quiet fist.
After each performance, we received a standing ovation. The crowd cheered
wildly. The reviews all came back positive. We decided to provide a free performance on Tuesday nights to any veteran who wanted to attend—a tradition that continues to this day, in slightly altered form, at Steppenwolf.
At first, veterans who came to the Tuesday shows were skeptical that we could re-create anything that represented their experiences. But word got out to the veteran community, and our Tuesday night crowds grew bigger and bigger. We performed in the 220-seat, former St. Nicholas Theater on North Halsted Street, and at the end of each show, vets in the audience got up out of their seats and swarmed the stage to shake hands and hug us actors. After each Tuesday-night performance, we hosted Q&A sessions with the veterans, often very emotional, and a lot of the same veterans came back week after week. Their stamp of approval felt life-changing for us, more important than any review we could ever get. That’s when I knew we were on to something good and lasting. A few veterans got together and made us plaques—one for each member of the cast—thanking us for telling their stories. The plaques read:
WE, THE VETERANS OF THE POST TRAUMATIC STRESS DISORDER UNIT, BUILDING 135 G, NORTH CHICAGO V.A.M.C., WISH TO EXPRESS OUR HEARTFELT THANKS FOR YOUR KINDNESS, CARING, AND UNDERSTANDING. YOUR UNSELFISH ENDEAVORS TO MAKE THE VIETNAM COMBAT VETERAN FEEL WELCOME IN A SOCIETY THAT HAS REJECTED HIM ARE GREATLY APPRECIATED.
WE APPRECIATE YOUR EFFORTS MORE THAN WORDS CAN EXPRESS.
AGAIN, THANK YOU, OUR FRIENDS.
Today, people often ask me about the highlights of my career. Tracers is one, an incredibly meaningful, absolutely extraordinary experience. As we did this play, I could see that the veterans felt like something was happening—for them. They’d been stuck in the shadows, discredited, abused, or simply ignored, and now they were watching these actors honor them and bring their stories out of the shadows.
I will always be grateful to John DiFusco and the cast of Tracers for the opportunity to work on this life-changing play. For the first time, I felt like I was giving back by honoring our veterans, by not letting them fall through the cracks, by not letting them feel unappreciated or forgotten.
I met many Vietnam veterans who had attended our free performances, and in the early 1990s I was asked to help raise funds to build the Lansing Veterans Memorial in Lansing, Illinois. A Vietnam veteran who had seen Tracers, Tom Luberda, organized the creation of the memorial. It features the names of our fallen heroes on a black granite wall with a giant UH-1 Huey helicopter mounted overhead, while a statue of a soldier carrying a wounded comrade to the awaiting chopper stands as a reminder to never leave anyone behind. I was honored to play some small part in helping Tom and the veterans realize their dream.
And to say thanks for my involvement, they put my brother-in-law’s name on the wall.
LTC BOYD MCCANNA HARRIS.
US ARMY NINTH INF. DIV.
AMERICAL DIVISION, VIETNAM.
CHAPTER 6
Glimpses of Glory
As artistic director of Steppenwolf, it was my job to read plays, and read plays, and read plays. Sam Shepard, the Pulitzer-winning playwright who often delved into the darker side of American family life, became one of my favorites, and in 1981 I sought the rights to Shepard’s True West. I dressed up in a nerdy corduroy jacket, slacks, and paisley tie, looking as official as I knew how, and flew to New York to meet with Sam’s agent, Lois Berman. At twenty-five, I still had crazy hair, and Steppenwolf could barely pay for my plane ticket, let alone a hotel, so I slept on the apartment floor of a friend, Saturday Night Live’s Tim Kazurinsky. My corduroy jacket didn’t impress Lois, who told me she’d never heard of Steppenwolf and wanted the better-established Goodman Theatre in Chicago to do the play. I took off my jacket, pulled off my tie, and flew back to Chicago, out of luck.
The play wouldn’t leave me. I had to direct this play, and I knew it would be great for the company, so every so often I phoned up Lois and asked if the Goodman had given True West any love yet. Now, at the time, I had an unusual office arrangement. Steppenwolf rented an always-cramped space at the Hull House, but I needed something just for me. So I climbed a metal ladder attached to a sidewall of the theater and created my own office space in the lighting booth, high above the theater’s floor. Somehow I lugged a tiny desk up the ladder, and I had a phone put in. That’s where I sat the day I answered the phone to hear Lois finally say, “Well, we haven’t had much luck with the Goodman. I guess you can have the rights.” I scrambled down the ladder, ran into the back office where everybody else shared space, and shouted, “We got the rights to True West!” Everybody cheered.
Little did we know then how big this play would become for Steppenwolf.
We opened True West in spring 1982. The play received great reviews and did so well that we moved it to the larger Apollo Theater in Chicago. Malkovich in particular was fantastic in his role and received all kinds of press attention. I knew we had to do something bigger—much, much bigger—with True West. We needed to take it to New York.
Theater success happens all around the country, but a success in New York can draw national recognition quickly, raising a theater’s profile. To have a hit show running in New York could only help us back in Chicago. So I called up Wayne Adams, a New Yorker who’d produced Say Goodnight Gracie for us in Chicago, and asked him to come see True West. He flew out, loved it, and returned with investor Hal Thau, who also loved it. Wayne and Hal raised $120,000, a lot of cash back then, for us to produce the show in New York. The opening was slated for October 1982. I flew to New York to scout theaters and found the Cherry Lane, a beautiful, older, 180-seat theater downtown near Sheridan Square. It was perfect.
Not everybody was happy.
Steppenwolf was in the middle of a move into a different theater in Chicago. The Hull House had proved too small for us, so we’d agreed to renovate the former St. Nicholas Theater space. Our board needed to raise extra money to make this possible, and the board, as well as a number of our actors, didn’t think the timing was right to take a Steppenwolf show to New York. And they didn’t think that I, the artistic director, should be spending so much time away from Chicago during the renovation and move. I disagreed. I felt we had to jump at this opportunity. We needed to find a way to make both situations work—opening the new theater, and moving the show to New York. I knew that the artistic director leaving town at the same time we were renovating a new theater was not exactly the best timing. But I wanted us to do both things simultaneously. The majority of the company did not agree with me and thought that by going to New York I was abandoning the theater just before all the construction had to be done. So right before I left for New York, I went to the St. Nicholas Theater. Some old risers needed to be chopped up and removed. I went in early one morning, fired up a chain saw, and buzzed through the risers like cordwood. Company members filed into the theater, one by one, to see what I was up to. I must have looked like an angry nutcase, attacking the risers with the chain saw, but I didn’t want anyone to think I didn’t care. And besides, I needed to relieve a little stress with that chain saw.
Complicating matters, the New York producers wanted us to switch up some members of the cast of True West. Laurie Metcalf, a terrific actress then in her twenties, had performed the show in Chicago, playing the mother, a character in her sixties. The producers wanted us to recast the part with a New York actress of actual age. Additionally, Francis Guinan and Jeff Perry, who were also in the cast, decided not to go to New York, siding with the members of the ensemble who didn’t think the time was right to move the show. So I needed to recast their parts as well. John was still up for it, but he was going to be directing our opening play at the new St. Nicholas, so I needed to figure out how to rehearse True West in New York with the new actors and without Malkovich being there in the beginning. I was definitely pushing a big boulder up a hill on my own, and as there were now only a few of us involved, the ensemble got so ticked off with me that they decided that the New York production could not be billed as a Steppenwolf show because it w
asn’t going to be a total Steppenwolf cast. So there was no mention of the company anywhere on any of the posters or newspaper ads for the show.
Perhaps most difficult of all was the situation with Tom Irwin. Tom is a fantastic actor who today has appeared in dozens of plays, movies, and TV shows, including his role as the soft-spoken father in the hit TV series, My So-Called Life. Tom had stepped into the role of the younger brother for a few weeks in our Chicago production of True West, and when Jeff told me he wasn’t going to New York, I’d asked Tom to come and do the play there. Tom had agreed. But after we started rehearsals in New York, one of our producers took me aside and said I needed to play Tom’s role. The year before, the producer had seen Malkovich and me acting together in our production of Of Mice and Men, and he felt that John and I acted very well together. Over the course of the next several days both producers kept encouraging me to make the change. This was a really tough moment. It was the first time we’d taken a show to New York, and everything was new. The pressure was building. It had been a stressful summer just getting the show to New York in the first place.
I don’t want to sound like I’m dumping this decision about Tom all on the producers. I knew it was going to be controversial within the company, and there had already been tension about whether we should take True West to New York at all. But no matter how much I tried to avoid making this decision, I felt I could do a good job in the role, and the producers kept urging me to make the change. So I did. The difficult job of telling Tom what I’d decided fell to me, and the decision didn’t go over well with either Tom or Steppenwolf, unsurprisingly. Not only had I gone off on my own and produced the show in New York against the wishes of the theater, now I’d just let one of our actors go and replaced him with—myself. Sheesh. The company was not happy with me, and since they were in Chicago focusing on our work there, and as there was a possibility that I may be staying in New York for a while if the show did well, they voted to remove me as artistic director. I was crushed. But I understood. Jeff Perry became the new AD. And me? I needed to focus on getting True West opened. Thankfully, down the road, there were no hard feelings between Tom and me, and he appeared in three out of the next four shows that I would direct in Chicago, including Tracers.