A Good Soldier
Oscar-nominated screenwriter Nicholas Kazan (Reversal of Fortune, Frances), son of the legendary stage- and film director Elia Kazan, speaks passionately about A Good Soldier, the new play that he felt compelled to write, finishing it in a mere eight days. He explains, "Recently I had been thinking about [the classic Greek tragedy] Antigone and was also obsessed with the last presidential election. I woke up last Nov. 3 and felt I had to do something…actually, to write something. I realized that Antigone, which I loved so much—both the original Sophocles version and the Jean Anouilh adaptation—spoke to me profoundly and would serve very well as a vehicle for what I wanted to express. So I sat down and started writing." Kazan set his myth-based story in the gritty hellhole of present-day Iraq, using the current war as a metaphor for a personal crisis of conscience.
He mentions that writing plays quickly is not a new experience for him, saying that when he is inspired to write, the plays sometimes just come out of him. He continues, "It's hard to do that sort of thing in film, because it is more about structure, more technical. When I began writing this, the parallels to Antigone were fairly close. Now the characters have taken over the asylum, so to speak. I realized exactly what to do and how it would work, and then it just all flowed in a really natural way. I have gone to friends for comments and made relatively small revisions, and I feel the play has grown." The play centers on Annie, a 21-year-old private who witnesses two events—one inside her army compound and one out in the streets of Iraq. This propels her on a course that will seal her fate and change the lives of her best friend Josey, her fiancé, and her fiancé's father, General Creedom (played by Clancy Brown, of Carnivà le and The Shawshank Redemption), who controls the forces in Baghdad.
Kazan elaborates on the key moral dilemma that drives the story: "You have a friend who calls you and asks you to do something. You love your friend, and you want to help. But for some reason, what you are being asked to do doesn't feel right. In this situation sometimes you go along and do the thing anyway because you want to be a good friend. Sometimes you just say, 'No, I can't do that,' which takes a lot of courage. But when you say it, you feel a tremendous sense of exhilaration that you have drawn a line for yourself—defined yourself in a certain way. In society, we all want to go along and live our lives in a normal way, yet there comes a point when an individual has to say no to [one's] government. I was a conscientious objector during the Vietnam War. Ultimately the country agreed that we should not be there. At a literal level, the play seems to be about the war in Iraq, but it's really about conscience and how we all choose to lead our lives—what we do and what we refuse to do."
Kazan notes that in the basic outline, the story follows its classical roots; the battle between Annie and Creedom is much like the original story's conflict between Antigone and Creon, though Kazan hopes to evoke strong resonance with current events. That's another reason he felt he must write the piece quickly. He adds that his earlier play Blood Moon has elements of classic Greek tragedy, including the device of a woman serving her unborn fetus to the men responsible for her rape and pregnancy. He asserts, "Both plays center around young girls, about 21. One theme that obviously interests me is the loss of innocence and how one makes the transition from childhood to adulthood."
Kazan says he was fortunate to enlist a seasoned director, Scott Paulin, and a professional casting director, Deborah Aquila, for this 99-Seat production. Aquila and her assistant Jen Smith worked on finding the best actors, some chosen in open auditions. Kazan approached Brown to offer him the role of General Creedom. He remarks, "I needed a strong actor, age 45–55, and I was happy that Clancy agreed to do it."
Kazan, born and raised in New York and a California resident since 1977, has mostly focused his career on screenwriting, though he has several plays on his résumé as well. "My early plays," he says, "were done at the Magic Theatre in Berkeley, and I wrote a play [Safe House] that was first done at the Mark Taper Lab, then again at Berkeley in 1976. Blood Moon opened in New York in 1983, and I had not written another one since then until now."
"Frankly," he admits with a chuckle, "theatre doesn't pay much and is much harder. Still, I love the theatre; there's nothing comparable to its magic."
—Les Spindle
"A Good Soldier" will be presented by SK-Tribe at the Odyssey Theatre, 2055 S. Sepulveda Blvd., L.A. Fri.-Sat. 8 p.m., Sun. 3 p.m. July 1-Aug. 7. $25. (310) 477-2055.