Two Plays Chart the Common Ground That Soldiers Tread on the Battlefield

On a dusty battlefield, a young soldier’s hand reaches out for a butterfly; a shot is heard, and the soldier’s hand falls to the dirt. That’s the unforgettable ultimate image in the classic anti-war film “All Quiet on the Western Front.” In its simplicity and humanity, that image makes a stronger statement about the horror of war than the bulk of the film.

Intellectually, everyone knows war is hell. The soldier’s reaching for the butterfly is a small moment that brings the feeling home. It’s those small moments that are at the core of an evening about war, playing at Alliance Repertory Company in Burbank.

“War Companion,” the first half of the evening, was created, researched and directed by Stephen Sealy. It’s a montage of about 40 letters, poems and writings resulting from American conflicts from the Civil War through the Gulf War.

The evening ends with a one-act play that was discovered in Alliance Rep’s first playwriting contest. “Tracks,” by Robert Spera and Sherman Howard, directed by Elkanah Burns, concerns two young soldiers trapped in a minefield, trying to figure out how they got there--and why.

Both pieces look at details to help form the big picture. Sealy, a cinematographer and director who was second-unit director for a season on “MacGyver,” thinks of the personal writings in “War Companion” as a counterpoint to the human comedy-drama of “Tracks.”

“What we wanted to see,” he says, “was the heights that people can rise to. Not the big story that war is terrible, but the small story, a young man finding himself in a situation.”

Sealy admits that his exploration of the material came from his own view of the Vietnam experience. He graduated from high school in 1967. “I was demonstrating on the campus. Divine intervention kept me from going. From my point of view, a soldier was a ‘them,’ and it was ‘them’ against ‘us.’ ”

Times have changed. So has Sealy’s outlook on war. “I still consider myself a pacifist,” he adds, “but during the Persian Gulf experience, I had to look at things in a different way. I was watching the TV and feeling my adrenaline flowing and feeling the patriotism.

“What surprised me was the feeling of being excited about war. That’s one of the reasons we’ve gone into this whole evening. This was a whole different war, a different feeling from Vietnam. It was different from World War II. But every generation has had that mutual experience.”

Sealy says the commonality of experience led to the inclusion of writings from our many wars. “The letters you get from a kid writing in the Persian Gulf War--’Mom, I wonder if I can really kill somebody; I wonder if I have the courage to help a buddy who’s down’--are the same as the letters from the Civil War. It’s the same letter in World War II or Vietnam.

“It’s the same experience. It’s not the rights or wrongs of the political situation. It’s still the story of one guy, or gal, out there, put in a life-or-death situation. The stories that touched us were about those who rose to this occasion; who, instead of becoming the people you despised, became the people you admire.”

The playwrights of “Tracks” also zero in on soldiers’ emotions.

Spera is a writer-director with a theater background (he was resident director at the prestigious Actors Theatre of Louisville) who is now writing and directing films. Howard is a writer-actor with a 20-year background in theater, television and films. He may be most recognizable as villain Lex Luthor on the syndicated “Superboy” series. He’ll be even more recognizable when his new ABC series, “Good and Evil,” with Teri Garr, debuts in the fall.

Spera and Howard began a friendship and working relationship as struggling actors 10 years ago in New York. It was about that time that the idea for “Tracks” came to them.

Their statement about war in “Tracks” also focuses on the small story. “What we wanted to capture,” Spera explains, “was not just the horror and tragedy, but the high-stakes comedy that occurs when you put human beings in situations where, on a moment-to-moment basis over a long period, their lives are at stake. That’s what kind of hooked us in, in retrospect. I don’t think we knew it at the time we wrote it.”

Howard adds: “When you put characters in a life-and-death situation like this, ultimately--and hopefully--they’re going to deal with issues that are really universal.”

Howard admits that stating those universals correctly is not easy. “They’re two young soldiers, a couple of grunts. The easy trap to fall into is making them much more articulate than one could expect in real life. The challenge is trying to effectively deal with these issues and really explore them in a way where you don’t say it. The truth comes through what’s not said.”

Ultimately, for Spera and Howard, it’s the large amount of humor in “Tracks” that makes the point. “We’re constantly renewing the sense of survival through humor,” Spera says. “In all of our lives, the ones who get through it are the ones who can find some way to look at the situation and then find a way to comment on it and respond with humor. That’s the key.”

Spera and Howard’s two grunts are no different from Sealy’s real-life letter-writers. “The guys who are talking about their experience of war,” Sealy says, “most of the time weren’t really fighting out of God and patriotism. It was because of their buddy. ‘I’m fighting to save my buddy.’ . . . Out there, it becomes the small story between two guys.”

“Tracks” and “War Companion” play at 8 p.m. Thursdays to Saturdays at Alliance Theatre, 3204 W. Magnolia Blvd., Burbank, through Sept. 14. Tickets: $15, $10 seniors and students. Call (818) 566-7935. T.H. McCulloh writes regularly about theater for Calendar.