By j. T. Rogers
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- STUDY GUIDE — Table of Contents
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- The Interview: J.T. Rogers
Chicago Premiere 
BY J.T. ROGERS directed by Nick Bowling
STUDY GUIDE Prepared by Joshua Altman, Dramaturg This Study Guide for Blood and Gifts was prepared by Joshua Altman and edited in part by Lara Goetsch for TimeLine Theatre, its patrons and educational outreach. Please request permission to use these materials for any subsequent production. © TimeLine Theatre 2013 — STUDY GUIDE —
The Playwright: J.T. Rogers 3 The Interview: J.T. Rogers 4 Timeline: A History of Events In Afghanistan 10 The Country: Afghanistan 15 The Agencies: CIA, ISI, KGB, MI6 and More 17 Glossary to the Play 18 Afghanistan’s Turbulent History 23 Durand Line 25 Gorbachev 27 1979: Iranian Revolution 30 Sunni and Shia Islam 33 Ahmed Shah Massoud 35 Gulbuddin Hekmatyar 36 Najibullah 39 Discussion Questions 41 References and Further Reading 41
Global in perspective, overarching in scope, J.T. Rogers’ plays fearlessly tackle some of the most complex issues of modern world politics and human rights. A playwright and student of history, his writing is characterized by a steadfast dedication to research. In order to develop a comprehensive understanding of relevant history and context, he reads voraciously and interviews an array of experts. He also travels to the countries he writes about to spend time with its people and, often, survivors of a particular conflict. This breadth of knowledge infuses his work with authenticity and multiple points of view.
He developed the script into a full-length play, which had its world premiere at London’s National Theatre in 2010. Blood and Gifts went on to play Lincoln Center Theater’s off-Broadway Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater the following year. That production was nominated for a Lucille Lortel Award and named one of The New York Times top 10 plays of 2011. Last summer it was staged at the La Jolla Playhouse in California. TimeLine’s production is the play’s Midwest premiere. Rogers’ other best-known play, The Overwhelming, also premiered at London’s National Theatre. In both plays, a primary male character ventures to a third-world country for work. Inevitably, each play’s major historical conflict catalyzes the clash between a visiting American and a native non-Westerner. This relationship is at the heart of Rogers’ work. Rogers is not only consumed by wanderlust, but by a determination to expand the purview of drama in order to better reflect a shrinking world. One of his most characteristic qualities as a playwright is his ability to shine light on faraway issues and force audiences to question just how distant they really are. In his Laura Pels Keynote Address to the 2008 A.R.T./New York Theatre Conference, Rogers outlined his goals: “I had to start learning more—much more—so that I could tell stories that dig under the surface of people and cultures that seem deeply foreign—even scary—to me and find the connections between us. To try and understand what those connections mean.” Rogers’ plays have been staged across the United States and in Canada, Germany, Israel and the United Kingdom. The Interview: J.T. Rogers “I lived for two years when I was young in rural Malaysia and Indonesia, which utterly marked my life and point of view as a person.” D I started writing short plays when I was in acting school at the North Carolina School of the Arts. I’d write them; my friends and I would put them up; people would come. Midway through my training I realized—in hindsight, with a blessed lack of angst—that I had made an internal shift whereby I now identified as a playwright first and foremost. Of course, I then became a better actor because I was no longer obsessing over my work. But, no, I don’t really miss it. I’m fortunate enough to give enough speeches, teach enough classes, speak on enough panels, etc., that any lingering performing needs get satiated. And, years on, the idea of doing a long run in a play seems astoundingly foreign to me. (PJP) You and TimeLine are kindred spirits, with our shared interest in exploring history. Have you always been a history buff? (JTR) Yes. I’m only now realizing how much so as I watch my 10-year-old son become obsessed with history and mythology and legends—through his eyes re-remembering how much I loved these same subjects when I was ten. (PJP) Michael Billington, the British theater critic for The Guardian, called you “that rare creature: an American dramatist who writes about global issues.” I’m guessing that spending parts of your youth abroad played into this? Can you talk about your upbringing and how it prompted you to look and think beyond your homeland?
Not exactly the same, but more proof that those of us who make and work in the theater read and absorb what everyone else amongst us is doing, whether we realize it or not. OK, digression over. My father was a political scientist who taught South East Asian studies. Because of his field work, I lived for two years when I was young in rural Malaysia and Indonesia, which utterly marked my life and point of view as a person. Being the “other,” the foreigner, as well as becoming fascinated about other lands and people while living there (and having very difficult, lonely times as well) set me on a course. (PJP) Your last two plays —The Overwhelming and Blood and Gifts—certainly fall into this global mindset, and I get exhausted just thinking about the research you conducted to tackle these rather epic and thorny plays. Let’s start with The Overwhelming, a play about the genocide in Rwanda. How did that play come to be, and what was your process of research? (JTR) You get exhausted? Try being me! No, no, I’m just being fresh with you because I’m writing you with a glass of wine in my hand and a stomach full of roast chicken. (I did overcook the veggies, though. Damn it.) When the Rwanda genocide occurred in 1994, I was gripped by the horrible images coming through the Western media and completely confused by the incoherence of what was being reported, which we now know was mostly egregiously wrong. And I was ashamed. Here I was, thinking I was knowledgeable about the world and its four corners, and I couldn’t have found Rwanda on a map. So I started reading, to just learn what and why and how … and slowly I crossed a line and found that I had gone from reading with my general-interest eyes to reading with my dramatist’s eyes. But I had no idea how to write about it and was terrified at the prospect. Soon thereafter the wonderful Salt Lake Acting Company in Salt Lake City, Utah, asked me to apply with them for an NEA/TCG Playwrights in Residence fellowship. I looked at who had won the award in years past. They were so very much hitting above my weight. So I thought, well, I have to sound impressive so I’ll write that I will create “my Rwanda play” if they chose me. And they did. And then I had to get to work. Without deadlines there is no art.
I was given a few options and immediately chose the Soviet-Afghan war of the 1980s because I remember as a child being very interested in it. From there I read a number of books, looking for my “in” to the story. The more I read about Stingers and spies the more I thought, “Here is where to begin.” (PJP) You got access to some heavy hitters while researching this play—Jack Devine, the former number two man at the CIA, and Steve Coll, author of Ghost Wars, among many others. How do you go about gaining not only access to them but, perhaps more importantly, their trust? (JTR) One of the things I treasure most about being a playwright and writing out into the world is all the fascinating people I continue to meet—many of whom are now colleagues, some even good friends. I called my friend Lawrence Wright who, like Steve Coll, writes for The New Yorker, and asked if he would write Steve and say, basically, I’m not an idiot and would he please write back if I emailed. Steve ended up meeting me and answering endless questions. His help and insights were invaluable. I had recently used contacts at the National Theatre in London to introduce me to the great British journalist Stephen Grey when I was researching a different play I’m writing for them. When I wanted to talk to someone who was actually involved in the Stinger program at the CIA, I called Stephen and he put me in touch with Jack Devine, who was gracious and more than forthcoming with anecdotes. He fact checked me up to my eyeballs, which was wonderful.
But, no, I’m not planning to write Blood and More Gifts, or Blowback’s a Bitch. As with The Overwhelming, when I finished this play, I had to start the process of extricating myself from the world the play inhabits. Ruthlessly, I’m a playwright, not a journalist. I have to move on. (PJP) A theme running through Blood and Gifts deals with fathers and sons, and legacies and what we pass on to our children. How did your son—and your role as a father—impact the telling of this story? (JTR) When I was first gripped in fever as I worked on the play I became grouchy that Turgenev had stolen my title of Fathers and Sons. At one moment I even asked my wife if she liked the title Sons and Guns. “Umm, no.” Thank God that was squashed. But as for my son, my role as a father … of course it’s shot through the play. But I actively try not to write directly about my life or to even dwell on it when I’m writing. I can’t not be in it, so best to push against that in the hopes of expanding the world I’m creating out as far out beyond me as my writing limitations will allow. (PJP) I’ve heard you say to the Blood and Gifts cast, “You should trust no one in this play.” Can you elaborate? (JTR) This is a hard play, in the sense that when it works it pushes back—hard—against the American ethos that everyone speaking to you is honest and true unless you know otherwise. We are lucky people indeed that that is our default position. For most of the world, it’s the opposite, whether this ethos is born out of recent traumas (Rwanda, say) or a longer, sometimes jaundiced national history (much of Europe, say). This is a play firmly rooted in the latter worldview. As I told Nick when we first talked about the play, “Just because Gromov speaks movingly and frequently about his family … how do we know he even has one?” I think he does, but thinking about such a possibility is helpful when approaching the world of this play.
My relationship with the National Theatre started when in a fit of hubris I said to my agent about the just-finished The Overwhelming, “Will you send this to the National? I mean, if anyone will do an 11-actor play that is set in Francophone Africa, it’s them.” Three months later, [National Theatre Artistic Director] Nicholas Hytner called me at home and asked if I’d come to London to meet the next day. I said I had a temp job, so could I come next week? I did. And we went into rehearsal six months later. It was, truly, the moment when everything changed for me.
But I am interested in the fact that in New York, we don’t want to acknowledge this difference. I was recently interviewed by a New York Times reporter who asked me if, now that the cycle of political plays I was part of in London had come to the U.S., I wanted to revisit my argument. But those plays came over here in that exact production, simply “visiting” as part of a world tour. That’s hardly commissioning and presenting American political plays in America—for which there is an audience, hungry and waiting, by the way. All to say, it does make me feel like a bit of a theatrical platypus: not really “like them” or “like us.” Though I’m damn happy to get produced wherever. (PJP) Also, now that you’ve gotten to know the Chicago theater scene a bit, with TimeLine’s Blood and Gifts marking your fourth play produced here, what are your impressions of this community? (JTR) You people are savages. (Again, the chicken talking.) The Chicago scene seems much more like London than New York. Here, like in London, critics and artists review or do work one month in a storefront, then next at the Goodman, all leading to a wonderful, we-are-just-doing-our-job ethos where theater is theater, wherever its being done. I really admire this way of working.
Mohammad Daoud Khan leads a bloodless coup and overthrows his cousin Zahir Shah. He installs himself as President and declares Afghanistan a republic. He accepts aid from the Soviets. 1975 Ahmed Shah Massoud and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar participate in a failed uprising attempt against Soviet-backed Daoud. Both flee to Pakistan. 1978 Massoud leaves Pakistan for the Panjshir Valley along Afghanistan’s northern border and asks locals to declare jihad against their Soviet-backed government. Soviet-backed conspirators in the Afghan army kill President Daoud. Nur Mohammed Taraki, a founding member of the communist People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan, becomes President. 1979 The exiled religious leader Ayatollah Khomeini returns to Iran. The Islamic Republic of Iran is declared months later. Kabul’s Marxist leadership launches a terror campaign, arresting 12,000 people who oppose communist rule. Executions of these potential rebels begin behind prison walls. President Carter authorizes the CIA to spend $500,000 on propaganda, radio equipment and medical supplies for Afghan rebels. To disguise its involvement, the CIA uses intermediaries to distribute equipment in Pakistan. A bitter rivalry develops between President Taraki and Columbia University-educated party comrade Hafizullah Amin. Amin ousts Taraki, has him killed and assumes leadership. In an attempt to remove Amin just a few months later, the KGB plants rumors he is working for the CIA. After Amin holds a meeting with American diplomats, the KGB fears the rumors they planted are true. The KGB sends military troops to Kabul to assassinate Amin and replace him with Babrak Karmal. Iranian students demanding the extradition of the overthrown Shah storm the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and take more than 60 Americans hostage. A religious zealot leads an attack on the Great Mosque in Mecca. Incited by Ayatollah Khomeini’s accusations that the Americans are behind this violent act, Pakistani students storm the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad and burn it to the ground. By Christmas Eve, there are 80,000 Soviet troops in Afghanistan. 1980 The U.S. changes its policy toward Pakistan and the CIA begins working with President Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq and the ISI (Inter-Services Intelligence), supplying the rebel groups with $30 million. Annual Soviet aid to the Afghan government is $1 billion. 1981 Ronald Reagan takes office in January. The American hostages in Iran are released within moments of his inauguration. Reagan re-authorizes Carter’s top-secret presidential funding to clandestinely ship weapons to the mujahedin. The CIA’s Afghan program budget reaches $30 million. The CIA secretly purchases hundreds of thousands of .303 Lee Enfield rifles. They are shipped into Pakistan and delivered to the Afghan rebels through the ISI. 1982 The Soviet Union appoints Mohammad Najibullah chief of the KhAD, the secret police force and primary security and intelligence agency of the Afghan government. Torture and executions are routinely carried out in effort to penetrate mujahedin groups. More than one million civilians flee Afghanistan and take refuge in Pakistan. 1983 The ISI’s Afghan Bureau, tasked with managing Pakistani mujahedin support, now employs about 60 officers and 300 enlisted men. 1984 U.S. Congress approves an increase in the CIA’s Afghan program budget, now totaling $200 million annually. President Reagan negotiates a deal with the Saudi royal family: for every American dollar spent, Saudi Arabia will match that amount. Combined annual aid reaches $400 million. Large numbers of RPG-7s, mortars and heavy machine guns begin flowing into Afghanistan, via Pakistan. The Soviet Union’s total spending on the Afghan War reaches $12 billion. 2,000 Soviet spetsnaz (special purpose forces) are deployed to Afghanistan. Their Mi-24D helicopters feature armor-coated bellies that repel fire of antiaircraft weapons available to the mujahedin. 1985 The CIA’s Afghan program budget increases to $250 million. National Security Decision Directive 166 is issued. It allows the CIA to increase funds allocated toward the CIA’s covert operation and supply to mujahedin with weapons that can be used to assassinate Soviet officers. Station chiefs are also permitted to establish unilateral contacts with Afghan warlords, without consulting the ISI. Foreign fighters, mostly from nearby Arab nations, come to Pakistan and Afghanistan to fight alongside the mujahedin. At a summit in Geneva, Mikhail Gorbachev, the Soviet Union’s new General Secretary, tells Reagan that he intends to withdraw Soviet troops from Afghanistan within four years. 1986 American-made Stinger weapons are distributed. U.S.-trained ISI officers teach mujahedin how to operate these heat-seeking antiaircraft missile launchers. The Soviets install secret police chief Mohammad Najibullah as Afghanistan’s president. 1987 U.S. spending on covert action in Afghanistan increases to $470 million. 1988 The Geneva Accords, which set out the terms of Soviet withdrawal, are signed by Afghanistan’s communist-led regime, Pakistan, the United States and the Soviet Union. The agreement permits the United States to continue to support the mujahedin and the Soviets to fund their allies in the Afghan government. The mujahedin, however, are not party to the Geneva Accords and refused to accept the terms of the agreement. Twelve thousand Soviet troops begin withdrawing from Jalalabad and other bases throughout Afghanistan. Pakistan’s President Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq, ISI Director-General Akhtar Abdur Rahman and Arnold Raphel, American ambassador to Pakistan, die in a plane crash. The cause is unknown. Hekmatyar, backed by the ISI, begins assassinating rival mujahedin commanders in an effort to establish his Islamic Party as the primary national force in Afghanistan. Yüklə 200,25 Kb. Dostları ilə paylaş:
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uring rehearsals for Blood and Gifts, TimeLine Artistic Director PJ Powers (PJP) talked with playwright J.T. Rogers (JTR) about his genesis as a playwright, the extensive research that informed the writing of Blood and Gifts, and the lamentable lack of plays with a global perspective premiering on American stages.