Other formats

    Adobe Portable Document Format file (facsimile images)   TEI XML file   ePub eBook file  

Connect

    mail icontwitter iconBlogspot iconrss icon

Salient. Victoria University Student Newspaper. Vol 35 no. 18. 27th July 1972

[Introduction]

Jim Bury lives in Northern California. At present he is working on a farm and attending occasional classes at a state college. In 1967, along with many other young Americans he was drafted into the army and sent to serve in Vietnam A very personal irony which he is quick to point out is that he departed from America on 4th July. In Vietnam he served in communications. Shortly after his service began, his unit was bombarded by mortar shells. The head was blown off the Sergeant, the Captain was degutted, and his best friend had both his legs blown off. Bury was uninjured save for a minor scratch for which he won the purple heart. But the experience changed him. His attitude moved from one of accepting life as it came to a kind of fatalism. After nine months he was badly injured in a mortar attack and mustered out of the services.

Jim Bury

Jim Bury

His experience of war is recorded in a series of letters which he wrote home to his mother and brother.

September 1970-a party in N. California.

"Look I got this thing, ya know man, I've been trying to write. Trying to write about NAM. I've been back now over three years. Can't stop thinking about it. I want to write a play that'll give people some idea of what it's like to be there some idea of what it's like to be in combat-some idea about the whole fucking scene. But you can't explode grenades under the audience; you can't send in mortar rounds; you can't kill people; you can't even scare them that much... How do you do it, what in hell do you do?....There's so much stuff inside me, all about alarm. It's in my head and guts - I can't stop feeling it. I'm trying to find some way to get it out.

Jim Bury handed over some letters which he had written home during his period of duty, and these letters became the basis of the play. Dick Rothrock brought these letters with him when he came to New Zealand. To try and create a play from them seemed to be a good project to undertake with Drama II students.

First came the talking. Dick Rothrock, Phil Mann and other interested parties tossed ideas about. The problem was to discuss an approach. On the one hand we didn't want to give a straight reading — effective though this may have been, and on the other we didn't want to directly "dramatize" the experience as we felt that this would somehow be dishonest to the original experience.

Glenvale Sherry

Finally, we concluded that what we were really talking about was the process of theatre itself. This became the start. We decided to create a piece of theatre in which was explored "how" the theatre "means". The subject was Jim Bury's experience of war. This approach led to great freedom in the use of time, space and theatrical methods.

A basic scenario was worked out on large sheets of draughting paper which allowed one to see how the tape effects, the acting, the slides and the text were to interact.

The text came directly from the letters. It was divided up between several actors playing Mum, Sylvia, (the girlfriend). Bury, A sergeant, an instructor, four soldiers and a Reader. The different phases of Jim Bury's experience of combat as revealed in the letters were projected through these characters. A basic structure was Innocence Becomes Horror becomes Fatalism. (This is too simple a progression but reflects in some measure Bury's development as a soldier.) Other sections were written by students in Drama II. These were concerned with topics such as Combat Fatigue, Anatomy Lesson, Weapons of War, and Origanization of U.S. Army Postal System.

When we came to work on the play, the cast were asked for their comments and supplied additional dialogue through improvization or by direct writing.

The process has been one of gradual accumulation. For example, Jum Bury sent us a tape in which he gave his comments on the scenario and read one of the letters. These incorporated as part of the performance.

Rehearsing for Nam

Rehearsing for Nam