THEATER AND FILM / Jan Herman : Tracing Emotional Path From Vietnam to Costa Mesa Playhouse

What Michael Herr once brought to the printed page with “Dispatches,” his memoir of the Vietnam War, John DiFusco and a group of Los Angeles veterans brought to the stage with “Tracers.”

A wrenching collage of true stories about “the green suck,” as they called their nightmarish experience of the longest and most unpopular war in the nation’s history, “Tracers” premiered in 1980 at the Odyssey Theater--partly as therapy and partly as a tribute to the 58,135 American soldiers who died in Vietnam and missed “the freedom bird.”

This was well before Vietnam’s deathly anthem of machine-gunfire and thundering helicopters became commonplace Hollywood sound tracks. Before “Platoon” won an Oscar. Before Stanley Kubrick broke his long silence with “Full Metal Jacket.” Before the do-good directors jumped in with “Hamburger Hill” and “The Hanoi Hilton.” Before “Tour of Duty” made the war safe for television and “China Beach” tried to make it provocative.

Now “Tracers” is coming to the Costa Mesa Civic Playhouse for a Thursday-through-Sunday run as the first production in a new series called “Theatre of Contemporary Issues.” Is Costa Mesa ready for a play that chants: “How were the drugs, man? How was Bob Hope? How does it feel to kill somebody?”

Artistic director Stan Wlasick says that if it isn’t, it ought to be. “My intention is to build a strong audience, and to do that you need to educate an audience,” he explained. “Vietnam may be a wound that is healed right now, but it’s a scar we must never forget.”

This will be the fourth time Wlasick has directed “Tracers.” He did it first with high school actors at the Rio Hondo Theater Festival in Whittier. At that time--February, 1987--the play had not yet been released for amateur performance. And so he presented a “production cutting”--an edited, one-act version of the play. It is this version that the Costa Mesa Civic Playhouse will be presenting.

“John came and saw it and thought the cut was very powerful,” Wlasick said. “He said it moved him because it was the first time he’d seen it performed by young men the same age as he was when he went to Vietnam.”

The last time Wlasick directed the play was six months ago at the California State Thespian Conference at Cypress College, where it was picked as one of the four outstanding productions. Andre Popa, who plays Dinky Dow, was also chosen as one of the four outstanding actors. He is reprising the role along with two other players from Wlasick’s original cast.

DiFusco, the moving force behind “Tracers,” was a 19-year-old perimeter guard at the Phu Cat Air Base in Vietnam’s central highlands in 1968. Every night for a year he climbed a tower lookout. His weapons were an M-60 machine gun, an M-16 rifle and hand grenades. His comforts were a transistor radio and an armed forces disc jockey who played Jimi Hendrix, the Doors, the Rolling Stones.

Back from the war with several combat decorations, including one for resisting an attack on Phu Cat during North Vietnam’s Tet offensive, DiFusco felt the opposite of a hero. He was dogged by bouts of depression. At one point he wrecked his car in a self-described suicide attempt.

As an actor trying to come to terms with his war experience, DiFusco sought out other veterans with the idea of working up a stage performance. He reasoned that if he didn’t succeed, the exercise at least would be therapeutic.

What emerged was a powerful series of vignettes, some of which never had been told because of shame or anger or the simple lack of an appropriate audience. It is not easy to confess irrational acts like the taking of human ears as trophies.

For three years after the initial success of “Tracers,” despite interest from such producers as Broadway’s David Merrick, DiFusco and his collaborators felt so obsessed by the material that they refused to allow any productions not performed by Vietnam veterans.

Eventually, the Steppenwolf Theatre in Chicago did “Tracers” with non-veterans in 1984. And there have been many professional productions since--in New York and London and again in Los Angeles.

Wlasick maintains that even with amateur performers two decades after the war, “Tracers” possesses an emotional resonance.

“I’ve had kids come up and tell me their fathers were in the war and never said much about it until they saw us do the play,” he said. “It really has had an effect on people’s lives.”

The title, incidentally, is taken from the self-illuminating machine gun bullets that signal a gunner he is out of ammunition.

Wlasick, a 33-year-old English teacher at El Rancho High School in Pico Rivera, was born in Long Beach, grew up in Corona del Mar and lives in Huntington Beach. He has worked at the Costa Mesa Civic Playhouse since he was a teen-ager. In 1979 he joined the board of directors and began directing shows there.

Until the beginning of July, the 90-seat Costa Mesa Civic Playhouse had always been run by the city. Now, for the first time, Wlasick and others have been asked to operate on their own. “We hope the city will continue to provide some help,” Playhouse treasurer Darlene Roth said. “At the moment we have next to nothing.”

Roth estimates that it will cost about $90,000 to finance the customary season: five plays, a Christmas pageant, a children’s show in the spring and a high-school scholarship program for original student monologues.

“We’ve asked the city for $35,000,” she says. “They should let us know by the end of the month.”

The “Theatre of Contemporary Issues” series, which Wlasick expects to continue with “Babies Having Babies,” is designed partly as a symposium. After each show in the series, audiences will be able to ask questions of the director and the actors.

Regular offerings at the Playhouse will commence in the fall with “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum” (Sept. 8-Oct. 2); followed by “Monday After the Miracle,” the continuation of “The Helen Keller Story” (Nov. 3-26); Neil Simon’s “God’s Favorites” (Jan. 19-Feb. 11); Albert Innaurato’s “Gemini” (Apr. 13-May 6); and Frederick Knott’s “Dial M for Murder” (June 1-24).

The Costa Mesa Civic Playhouse will present the El Rancho Little Theatre production cutting of “Tracers” Thursday through Saturday at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 3 p.m. A symposium will immediately follow each performance. The playhouse is at 661 Hamilton St., Costa Mesa. Ticket donations are $4. Information: (714) 650-5269.