Paul Woodruff: The Vietnam Plays

Veterans’ issues are front and center now, after Iraq and Afghanistan, as they were not after Vietnam. This is a good time to put before the public the texts of these two plays, which were started during the author’s tour of duty in Vietnam and finished soon after. A soldier returns from a long war, expecting a welcome, and no one recognizes him. In his own house he is treated like a beggar. This is the ancient story of Ulysses, but it also expresses how many veterans feel today. How can any civilian understand what soldiers have seen and done? How can civilians take back into their arms veterans who have blood on their hands? In Ithaca in Black and White we see a modern Ulysses as he discovers that he has no place in the home he has dreamed about, but he finds promise in a fresh courtship of his former wife and a journey onward. The play won an award in Austin, Texas, as the best new script of 1983. Geoffroy’s Jerusalem tells the tale of a crusade that began with a noble cause and ended with the tawdry sack of a great city, Byzantium. The chief of staff of the army tries to persuade God, in scene after scene, that the corruption of the war was not his fault. War easily gets out of hand, and the violence generals plan so easily goes beyond their intentions. We in the audience sympathize with Geoffroy, but, like him, we are horrified by what he had brought about.