This "character" was tortured in Abu Graib, and members of his family were killed because of the U.S. invation of Iraq.
Jessica Blank and Erick Jensen’s “Aftermath” closed this weekend at New York Theater Workshop, and I was able to attend the Sunday matinee.
This work is well-written–or, “well-assembled”, as most of the dialogue is taken from transcriptions of interviews with post-American invasion Iraqi refugees—and the cast is very gifted, each member of the company delivering performances that in turns stirred and disturbed.
I will be honest that I wasn’t sure whether or not I even wanted to see this play. I knew the subject matter would be difficult. My central reservation was tied to a personal (call it a moral) skepticism about making art out of current human atrocities; more specifically, play-acting the lives of people who are currently suffering.
I don’t really have a philosophical place of argument. It’s more a feeling I get. Like when TV shows started incorporating the current Iraq war (still not over, folks) into their plotlines. I find it uncomfortable to watch. By presenting the war as status quo, and by avoiding the war’s political precariousity (that is: a war can only exist as long as it is allowed to exist by a governing body), these shows seemed to offer a tacit endorsement of the war. The war is even necessary in order for these narratives to resonate the way they are intended. It’s topical, and all topical subjects are tied to temporal proximity.
At any rate, my reservations proved both correct and also inept while watching “Aftermath.”
The play presents six stories of real Iraqi refugees; refugees who I assume (perhaps naively, perhaps optimistically) are still alive and living under reprehensible conditions thanks to our country’s war against theirs.
The tactic of the playwrights is fair enough: get the audience to care about the characters (can we call them “characters”?) through humor and amiability, then, once they’re hooked, thread in the conflict, the carnage, the cold hard truths about life, and the reality that our tax dollars were (and still are) at work in ruining the lives of real live people in another country, on another continent, in a place where most of us will never set foot in our entire lives.
And make no mistake: the creators of this show are profiting from its success, and, therefore, these events. It is also sketchy that the dozens of people who were interviewed in order to make this work are not directly credited, nor even thanked in the program, and that Blank and Jensen are given sole credit for “text.” But then, what is it to “thank” someone for a stories such as these? [UPDATE: Please see discussion with Erik Jensen in the comments below, including a clarification of my intentions with this paragraph.]
But I resist faulting “Aftermath” for being manipulative, even though it is that to a degree. There is something in it that goes well beyond the authors’ care to execute their job well; to construct an interesting theatrical structure; to draw in the audience; to tell a story. But this is also where that crisis comes to a fore, in that really all art must on some level entertain, and in order for performance to survive–to reach people, and therefore, touch them–it must be successful.
But what does it mean for this play to be “successful”? And what does it mean to be entertained by these stories?
We have a wealth of conflicting feelings toward actors in the theater. Mainly their job is to entice, to be attractive and to entertain; to be good at captivating an audience. Does this make sense in a work that is about such real and living suffering? I suppose I’m questioning whether or not these events should have been made into a “play” at all, at least, not right now. Wouldn’t this subject be best served by journalism?
And there is a way these actors can make real the stories that might just roll across the glaze of our eyes on the computer as a hyperlink headline. The play succeeds in getting us to care about these people, to feel their humanity, and to care about their humanity when it is tortured, wounded, and suffering. But does this necessarily translate to care for the real thing? The real event? The real lives?
Maybe I’m just appalled that it might actually take a theatrical work to show Americans that the cost for this kind of war is far more damning that just the lives or our own troops, or the enormous financial loss (which is outrageous on its own, not just as debt to the government, but as profit to private interests, and to the real people behind those private interests): the loss is human; total; it cannot be undone, and these people’s loved ones, families, friends and neighbors caught up in the current of a war that could have been prevented and arguably never should have happened can never be brought back to life; we can never regain those lives, nor undo the heinous manner in which they came to end.
Maybe I’m angry that we just may need this kind of play.
It was jarring when a woman behind me began applauding after one of the actors playing a middle-aged Iraqi who owned a pharmacy delivered a gut-wrenching tirade against the kind of lawless, mindless, and soul-numbing violence that has been stirred up directly as a result of the U.S. -led occupation. She applauded; but she was the only one. And maybe she was applauding the message, and not the method.
At any rate, this moment stirred exactly my fear about this event being turned—however expertly—into art.
And I didn’t want to experience the range of emotions that theater brings—a range, by the way, that often blindly strides across the subjective boundary delineated by the work of theater at hand (i.e. am I sexually attracted to one of the actors, am I thinking of my own goals and aspirations, what do I think of government-subsidized theater, what restaurant will I eat at later)—during a play like this.
Nor do I know just how helpful it is to willfully subject ourselves to this kind of excruciating work. Does it make us go out there and fight to end this war once and for all, and to give restitution to the Iraqi’s whose lives we have sickeningly altered forever? Probably not. It did make me give ten dollars after the show to a fund that goes to helping the living refugees of this war. Is that enough? Will that satiate my guilt, and my genuine, nauseating sorrow for this maddening atrocity that I could not stop, or did not do enough to stop?
Or, finally, maybe I’m trying to escape my responsibility by drawing this jagged line between art and reality; between my real experience in the theater and what I perceive to be the work; not wanting one to mix with the other. Yet I find the conflation of real and play in the hands of this work equally troubling.
I don’t know.
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The salient sentence you write is “Maybe I’m angry that we just may need this kind of play.” I ‘ve lived with that anger for a couple of years now. And I didn’t know what to DO with it. So in a conversation at a breakfast one day iwth Jessica Blank, this project was born. It was born of anger.
The questions you raise about “entertaining” viewers by depicting real pain and suffering is a timeless question that all artists and viewers must answer for htemselves.
And my answer for myself on AFTERMATH, is I am very proud that anger yielded something constructive.
.
Hi Jim-
Huge appreciation for your comment here.
I’m sure much of the conflict that arises with and within this work can be attributed to questions that may never yield answers. Those are also the questions I happen to have a great conviction about asking, even if it’s the course of asking that ends up mattering most.
Great luck to you and all who helped create this work, even if the circumstances that led to its creation are unspeakable. But to its credit, Aftermath has given voice to that node of silence.
C.C.
Hey. Erik Jensen here. Co-author of “Aftermath”. I have few issues with many of the interesting and important questions you raise in this article. However, it’s mildly irresponsible to state the following without doing some background research first.
You stated:
“…And make no mistake: the creators of this show are profiting from its success, and, therefore, these events. It is also sketchy that the dozens of people who were interviewed in order to make this work are not directly credited, nor even thanked in the program, and that Blank and Jensen are given sole credit for “text…”
Respectfully, we were unable to credit or thank our interviewees by name in the program for “Aftermath” because the people we interviewed, who translated for us etc. were literally taking their lives into their hands by agreeing to participate and tell us their stories. Almost every single person we spoke to asked that their names not be revealed and that identities and identifying details be disguised. If it wasn’t made clear enough by the play let me make it clear in this writing that Iraq is still a VERY, VERY dangerous place. Militias and terrorist organizations are still looking for excuses to kill people. As if any “excuse” is a justification in the first place. Because they might be perceived as “collaborators” thanking our subjects by name could be a death sentence for them.
As for acknowledging the fact that these words were drawn from interviews, that is something that is announced at the beginning of every performance and that we talk about widely in the press—we always acknowledge that the vast majority of the words in the play were first spoken by those we interviewed, and do not “take credit” for them.
Also, if you had done some research before writing this you might have run across the book we wrote called “Living Justice” about the making of our previous documentary play, “The Exonerated”. In the beginning section of that book we thank over 100 people who donated their time and efforts to doing this kind of work as well as every single person we interviewed. If we are ever able to thank people, we do.
Since we started doing this stuff, all our work in the vein of “Aftermath” has a fundraising element to it. We contribute a portion of our income, and we turned down early offers from producers re: “The Exonerated” who refused to set up revenue streams to benefit exonerated death row inmates. Also, our next film (it goes into production this spring) is about homeless teens in LA and a significant amount of what we make will be going to help homeless youth.
OK. As to us and how we’ve “profited” from Aftermath… This far we’ve jointly “profited” at about 80 cents an hour for a year’s worth of rigorous work we’ve spent on this play at about 50 hours a week . Feel free to do the math. We have a baby coming and that hardly constitutes anything approaching a living wage much less a “profit”. We would have made more money collecting unemployment. It is called “non-profit” theater for a reason. Theaters are financially struggling as well, and we all just do the best we can.
We have however, with “Aftermath”, managed to raise $20,000.00 for Iraqi refugees… checks have been sent to the humanitarian organizations I.R.C. (International Rescue Committee) and CIVIC (Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict) and we have arranged for those contributions to be earmarked for direct aid to Iraqi civilians. Again, that 20,000 dollars is several times the amount that either my wife, Jessica, or I has made to date on this play. That 20,000 dollars that we and the other artists raised together will help clothe, feed, heal and house a lot of refugees in Jordan and Syria where the dollar can be stretched farther than it can here.
As far as “profiting from these events” goes… well … I’m not really sure how you arrived there. I think that we have all lost a great deal because of the horrific events of the last 8 years. Particularly Iraqi civilians. When we did these interviews, it seemed that most Americans would have a hard time even beginning to understand or comprehend what the Iraqi civilians have lost, because those Iraqis have been abandoned by much of the press and the western media in general.
In the December 2008 issue of Vanity Fair, Seth Mnookin reports that “…at the beginning of the war as many as 1000 Western reporters were on the ground. Now it’s a few dozen….” How do a few dozen reporters cover the lives of 4 million uprooted people? Our aim was to help bring voice to some of the voiceless, in a human and emotionally immediate way. That is all our aim ever is.
We feel a huge sense of responsibility… having been entrusted with stories which might otherwise be forgotten. Our job is to truthfully and rigorously get out of the way so that these stories can be heard. That takes hard work, work whose rewards are more often spiritual rather than material. (We can’t all work for Exxon, after all.)
The only real thing that we gain from this, aside from the gratification of working with a group of extraordinary artists and humanitarian workers, is the knowledge that perhaps now some of these stories we’ve been entrusted with WON’T be forgotten. God willing anyway.
And as with “The Exonerated” my real hope is that the day will come when “Aftermath” need never be performed again.
In the meantime, one way of contributing in a real and direct way to civilians affected by this war is to donate to the IRC or CIVIC at http://www.theirc.org or http://www.civicworldwide.org
Peace. Salaam. And thank you for engaging with these stories.
Erik Jensen
Hi Erik-
I’m very glad you responded to my writing. Thanks for putting in the time, and the thought.
You are right. I should have been more articulate about the “Make no mistake…” passage. Aside from (in retrospect) sounding like I just lifted it from the latest Obama speech, I used the term “profit” in a very general way; in a way that allowed you the space to believe I meant specifically financial profit. That was wrong of me.
“Profit,” the way I used it, was meant to be understood as an impersonal, total sum of the result of the work, however it applies. What you and your wife haven’t gained in dollars, you have gained in professional success. I’m not criticizing you for this. I think it’s just one of the issues (perhaps unresolvable) that arise when creating a work the way “Aftermath” has been created. Again, for this play to be effective, it has to reach people, but it can’t reach people if it isn’t successful. I didn’t mean in any way to suggest that you and Jessica only had financial profit as an interest; but I don’t think we can separate the desire both of you have to be professional theater makers from the events/subject you have used here. The choice that you have made, however well intended, opens up this ethical conundrum, and I experienced it when I came to see the show. That’s why I wrote about it. But again, I am sorry if you or anyone who read this piece took what I wrote to mean the two of you were somehow exploiting these people’s stories and raking in the cash. I don’t believe that, and I didn’t mean to suggest it.
In terms of the crediting of the interviewees. It did cross my mind, after I wrote this piece, that these people probably did not want their names explicitly printed. I did manage to gather from your play that the situation even in Jordan is precarious for these people. And yes, there was an announcement beforehand that the text was taken from interviews. But I do take professional issue with listing yourselves as responsible for “Text” in the website and in the program. (As I take issue with choreographers who use the improvisations of their dancers to create work, but then take sole credit for “choreography”.) I think there should be a more sophisticated way to describe what the two of you have done, and have done very well, I should add.
In searching the program, I did notice that there is a section where thanks is given to certain people, but never, say, “To all the individuals who offered their stories….” Maybe that would seem redundant to you if you consider the play to be the very thing that honors them. But I don’t think you can honor these people enough. Not finding this, I felt like uncomfortable about the blurring of the real people behind these stories and the art of theater making. Again, I don’t know if this should be a “thank you,” and I do think it’s interesting that that’s what I was looking for. But there should really be a more prominent honorific in the program that acknowledges these people. That’s how I feel. Take it as you will.
And in regards to research. I mean, perhaps I could have done some. But the questions I raise are probably raised in the minds of many of the people who go to your show, people who are not going to do research either before they see it, or after they experience it. If you want to take me to task as a professional writer, fair enough, I could have made the effort to contact you, interview you, etc. But I didn’t go to the play as a member of the press. And neither does the vast majority of your audience. So if there are issues this piece raises (which then I raised here) that aren’t resolved and answered by what you would offer any casual audience member–issues that you find important–I would recommend that you take another look at what you present, and then take steps to preempt these potential questions.
I don’t mean to be harsh here. Again, the work itself was very powerful and well done, but may always raise certain issues, issues that you and your partner may never fully be free from answering to.
Thank you for your work and your words.
Ryan
(aka, C.C.)
To Erik, and to all-
In addition to adding a link from the questionable paragraph being discussed in these comments, I shifted the “jump,” which I realize now I had placed strategically after this paragraph, probably because I thought it titillated the reader to clicking through.
I’ve replaced the jump to a less provocative location. I hope this reads truer to my intentions with this post.
C.C.