Theater Company Tells It to the Marines

The Way Off Broadway Playhouse can’t be accused of pulling any punches.

On Wednesday, the Santa Ana-based company traveled to the El Toro Marine Corps Air Station to present four short vignettes, collectively titled “Temporary Sanity,” which portray domestic violence among military families in brutal and profanity-laced terms.

“Temporary Sanity” will be presented for civilian audiences on Friday and Saturday at the company’s theater in Santa Ana.

Wednesday at El Toro, the 45-minute production was part of a larger program focusing on child and spousal abuse, sponsored by the base’s Family Service Center. The high-stress military life style, which can include long hours on duty, frequent and lengthy family separations and low pay, was cited by several speakers as causing a high incidence of domestic violence.

“Temporary Sanity” portrayed four examples of violent situations: a husband who verbally and physically abuses his wife and young daughter; the aftermath of a wife-beating in which the husband is implored to seek counseling; an instance where the wife of a Marine takes her frustration out on her young son, and a staff sergeant who verbally and physically abuses his teen-age stepson.

The vignettes employ harsh language and violent actions, and all portray some degree of alcohol abuse. Allison Gappa, who wrote the production, said there was some pressure from the military to tone down the language and the violence, and to play down references to alcoholism, after officials saw the play in rehearsal.

She said they were also unhappy with the first vignette, which ends in blackout with the Marine husband pinning his wife to the floor and beating her. The other skits offer some measure of resolution: A wife stands up to her husband and convinces him to seek counseling; a Marine couple reports the abuse of a neighbor’s child; a stepfather and son come to a reconciliation.

“They haven’t said, ‘Don’t do this,’ ” Gappa said Wednesday after the first of two performances. But “they squirmed a little.”

Gregory Bach, director of the production, and producer Tony Reverditto were in on discussions with the military. “If we go and soften it for the military, we can’t get the message across,” Bach argued.

In the end, the vignettes were performed as originally written, and Way Off Broadway members said the Marines were largely cooperative.

Gappa, for instance, received help in learning military jargon from the staff of the Family Services Center, and another group of Marines helped the actors portraying military men to prepare for their roles, and even took them to the base barber to get military haircuts.

Way Off Broadway became involved in the event after officials of Parent Help USA, a nonprofit group that organized Wednesday’s event, read a feature story about the theater company in The Times. The theater company was asked to participate just 4 weeks ago; Gappa was asked to write the production on a Sunday, and had to have a script ready for the actors on the following Saturday.

Reverditto, founder and president of the Way Off Broadway Playhouse and Acting Studio, became the producer of Wednesday’s entire 2 1/2-hour program. “They’ve helped us in every way they can. They’ve been wonderful,” said Sally Nava Kanarek, executive director and co-founder of Parent Help USA. “They’ve gone beyond their play.”

Gappa brought a special perspective to her involvement in the production--she was herself abused as a spouse, and has written about domestic violence for Ladies’ Home Journal, Cosmopolitan and other publications.

“I was a battered wife 17 years ago,” she said. Legally, little could be done then about an abusive spouse: “I had the police tell me I should kill him.”

Portraying situations of domestic violence in the vignette format, with only about 10 minutes per section, provided a special challenge for Gappa and Bach. “A full-length production has a kind of arc,” Bach said. “We had to get right to the point.”

Bach said he plans to change the main characters in three of the vignettes to civilians for this weekend’s performances, mainly to stress the point that domestic violence is not restricted to any segment of society.

Ruth Mushallo, deputy director of the base’s Family Service Center, said she doesn’t believe that domestic violence is any more prevalent among military families than among other social groups. “The essential difference is that we can count them” because the military community is relatively self-contained, she suggested.

She worried that the harshness of the scenes in “Temporary Sanity” might put off some members of Wednesday’s all-military audience but agreed that “for the drama of it, all the bad things have to be exposed.”

Sgt. Wesley Sanders, who watched the Wednesday morning program, said he has not encountered the issue of domestic violence directly through neighbors or friends.

“It’s like anything. It can get hectic,” Sanders said of the military life style. But he added that he can see how incidents of abuse arise for individuals who must take orders all day. “You come home,” Sanders said, “and you have that liberty of giving orders yourself.”

“Temporary Sanity” will be performed Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m. at the 42-seat Way Off Broadway Playhouse, 1058 E. 1st St., Santa Ana. There will be musical performances in addition to the dramatic production. Tickets are $25, with a percentage of the proceeds going to benefit Parent Help USA. Information: (714) 547-8997.