The Boys of Winter: Review is good

We close this weekend. It's been a long haul. The rehearsal process was brutal. We were scheduled Monday through Friday 6:00 to 11:00, but most nights we got out between 10:30 and 11:00. The last hour was usually just a sleep-deprived shuffle across the stage, the actors just trying not to fall over and remember some semblance of our blocking. Despite the schedule, we took the stage on opening night with about a week and a half of rehearsal.

But then the production takes off, and the magic starts to work on the stage.

The Jewish Advocate gave us a good review.

I wish there was more to say. I wish I had some dirt on the backstage goings on of the cast or something like that, but it's pretty much cut and dried. We all meet at the theater, usually I'm the first one there, and then the rest trickle in. The stage manager gives us the remaining time notice...thank you, fifteen...and he's learned to look for me in the darkest recesses of the back hallway where I go over my opening lines and just think and feel the character for a bit until it's places and I watch the lights go down through a crack in a door and creep onto stage for the top of both acts. Then it's an emotional roller coaster ride that depends so much--for me, at least--on the reaction and the energy from the audience. Theater is not a spectator sport. The tacit agreement I always walk onto stage with is this: You give me energy, and I'll take it and do my darndest to move you. And this is especially so in this play. Without tipping too much of my hand, the Narrator comes out at Act I, Scene I and kicks the fourth wall down. Just obliterates it.

Sunday morning, Quincy, Mass.

It's almost 10:00 on a Sunday morning. Hannah poured through last night, and now we have the start of the beautiful weather that comes after a hurricane or tropical storm.

Sue's out on a call, and no she doesn't have a map but she knew where she was going thanks to the fact that Comcast was up last night, even during the storm. Had to put that in so the tweakers over on UniversalHub don't get their panties in a twist.

Was going to put on some music--I know there's some Dead and some Whiskeytown queued up, but then I heard the church bells from the Congregational church one block over playing, and thought it would be nice to just sit here by the open window and feel the steady breeze blowing in and listen to the church bells instead.

Boys opened Friday night. It was a shaky opening, thanks to the theater tradition of good dress/bad opening, but we made up for it last night and got a good review today on EDGE Boston.

I can hear the Red Line rattling by, always a comforting sound to anyone who lives in an urban area. You live a love/hate relationship with the T here in Boston. Well, sort of. I happen to love the the T. I love that it's so cheap, I love that it gets me where I need to go, and I love watching all my fellow Bostonians. It's a free--and sometimes freak--show, and it makes me feel like I'm a part of something.

The Boys of Winter Playbill

Playbill gave a nice writeup about The Boys of Winter.

It's a good story--one that needs to be told--and I'm very proud as an actor and an artist to be part of this project.

There are people in this world who need a voice. The Creator gave me a voice. I mean one I can really use. And this is the sort of thing I always want to do.

I mean, does the world really need another production of Little Shop of Horror or Fiddler on the Roof??

The Boys of Winter

Half a world away from Vietnam three high school seniors are playing hockey...for their lives.

The year is 1966. The place is Minnesota. Upon graduation they will either go to college or end up in Vietnam. Watch the story of these boys and those around them as their chances dwindle and the miles to war become fewer.

This powerful story was written by three playwrights: Eric Small, Dean B. Kaner and, locally, Barry Brodsky who served in the Army during the Vietnam War and is currently the Director of the Veterans Upward Bound program at U.Mass-Boston

The Boys of Winter. The site pretty much tells it all. At least all the whos, whats, and whens.

I'm still too early in the process. Just reading and rereading the script. And I know that whatever I'm thinking now will bear absolutely no resemblance on what I do on the stage in September, but it's all part of the process.

The Boys of Winter

Whenever I take on a major role in a play, there almost always is one line that resonates within me, one that calls to me.

Sometimes it's someone else's line, as with, "He's my heart," Irma's line in Looking for Normal when she's speaking of her husband, Roy, who she loves so much she'd do anything for. If you've ever loved someone with your heart and soul, that line needs no explaining. And Kate delivered it to me with so much heartfelt meaning that it just about broke my heart each night.

Most of the time, though, I'm drawn to one of my own character's lines, as in, "I don't do well in town," so said Tilden in Buried Child. That pretty much sums up me in society in general, and it was one of the easiest lines I've ever delivered on the stage.

And in The Boys of Winter, the line jumps out early and hard for me. The Narrator (me) says, "And when the school year's up they'll either go to college (long beat) or to fucking 'Nam. That's the choice we had in 1966, 'cause we weren't rich and we didn't know shit about the world and there was a fucking draft."

Okay, that's more than one line, but you get the picture.

And the reason that line grabs me by the throat and won't let go is because that pretty much describes me in 1973, when I turned 18 and there was a war on and we still had a draft. That long beat the playwright inserts in there is, I think, to give the slower members of the audience time to realize there really wasn't a choice at all. These kids weren't going to go to college, and neither was I. (I didn't go to college full-time until I was 21. I worked and traveled and got my head screwed on straight first.)

So if I had been drafted I would have gone, because I wasn't rich and didn't know anyone, especially anyone in Canada. That was the kind of family I was raised in: you did what you were told, whether it was the nuns giving the orders or the federal government.

And because I never served in Vietnam or even in the military, I don't know anything about this story except what I've heard and read. But from reading the script I can see that it's a story that needs telling. And I'm honored (and scared out of my mind) that the director and producers chose me to help tell it.

I've gone through things in my life that other people just don't understand. There are a lot of things in life that we go through, and unless you actually go through them yourself, other people just don't get it. And there are a lot of people who just don't even try to understand how something affected someone. Or don't believe the other person.

Vietnam was a long time ago, and there are plenty of people who say, just like they say about the Holocaust or other terrible things that have happened to people, "That was a long time ago. For God's sake, get over it. Grow up. Shake it off. Time heals all wounds."

Guess what? Time does not heal all wounds. There are some wounds that never completely heal. Don't you think that they could "shake it off" they would? Do you honestly think people like suffering?

So they go through life, quietly, not talking about it because all they want is a little understanding. But they don't get it so they just shut up about it, but it all still comes out. They put away the fatigues and don't talk about what happened. The ones who really saw what happened, don't still wear their uniform or still talk army talk (0400 this and 1730 hours that) or show off or try to recapture the fun times they had in the military, because they didn't have a fun time. They served and they gave it up for their country. I met a guy out in the Utah desert who was in the 1st Army (the Big Red One) who went into Baghdad this second time around and, as they say, went over there a boy but came back a man. He didn't cut and run, he did what he signed up to do. He didn't want to talk about his time over there (not that I wanted to talk about but he didn't say--almost whispered--a few things) he just wanted to forget it--though he couldn't--and make a new life.

And that's what my character is trying to do. Trying, because I get the feeling not too many people can do it. Mainly because, as I said, one thing I've learned in this life is that time doesn't heal all.