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2005-2006, Volume 1
Last of the Boys: A right fit for Steppenwolf at 30.
by Martha Lavey
Last of the Boys is a right fit for Steppenwolf at 30. The play, by Steven Dietz, is about the legacy of the Vietnam War on the American psyche. That war ended 30 years ago. Steppenwolf is a theater company that grew up in the long shadow of that war. The generation that came to age as the Vietnam War ended bears the legacy of an America torn asunder by generational, gender, racial and class conflicts. Much social and cultural progress was advanced by that moment of national self-reflection; much damage remains. Last of the Boys presents four characters haunted by that damage and struggling to move on.
The four central characters of the play—two Vietnam veterans; and two women, a mother and daughter, the one a widow of the war, the other, a child of the war—provide a range of perspectives on the meaning of Vietnam.
Ben and Jeeter, two men inextricably bound to one another by their time together in Vietnam, now lead widely divergent lives. Ben is taciturn, a loner, fixed in the confines of his makeshift homestead. Jeeter is ebullient, a professor teaching the history of 1960s America at a liberal college, a sociable and restless traveler.
It is the character of Jeeter who introduces the concept of the mystical into the play. While each of the other three central characters are stuck in their lives—mired by their various devotions (to patriotism, to sorrow, to the dead)—Jeeter travels, he moves, encountering shamans and mystics, alert to the transforming power of the supernatural. It is Jeeter who introduces the idea of the “vortex:” the proper convening of spiritual forces and voices through which enlightenment is conferred.
What is exhilarating about Last of the Boys is its strange traffic between the naturalistic and the supernatural. That IS the legacy of Vietnam and its imprint on American culture. It was a devastatingly REAL event. It was also, and profoundly, a spiritual experience. The forces that came into being and roiled our cultural life had a mythic force.
This is precisely why Steven’s play is so apt a fit for Steppenwolf at 30. Our most profound wish for Steppenwolf is that it is a theater where you can come to reflect upon how we live now. We tell stories. We hope to tell those stories in all the specificity and the spaciousness of tales both urgent and timeless. It’s great to be 30 years into the endeavor. It is the perfect age at which to know the power of reflection and the tremendous grace of renewal.
Welcome to Steppenwolf at 30,
Martha Lavey
Artistic Director
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