The same week his father died, several members of an Ohio Marine troop also perished. Eventually the death toll for the troop reached 22 and a large memorial was held shortly after Tisdale's father's funeral. Several people who attended his father's funeral went on to the larger one for the Marines, which turned into a vigil attended by tens of thousands of people.
Tisdale says that he became interested in writing about the aftermath of the Marines' deaths as part of his own grieving process. He began reading newspapers and magazines about the deaths and contacted a journalist friend to ask how to approach the families. She told him to cold-call family members -- but to be sure immediately to tell them he wasn't a journalist. "I also told them I was on the same grieving path and that because of that I felt like their stories resonated with my deeply. What I wanted to do was write a screenplay that would be like a monument to their sacrifice and the sacrifice of their sons and husbands," Tisdale said in a recent interview in a Brooklyn cafe. "The press attention was a factor, because I realize from my own small microcosm of losing my father, people say they feel bad for you about two weeks to a month. The same thing happened on a national scale for them."
The resulting work, Goldstar, Ohio, opens at Here Theater in New York on July 10. Directed by The Laramie Project's Andy Paris, Goldstar is a deeply personal work that tells the story of several Ohio families coping with the loss of family members in Iraq. (The name comes from the gold star that family members receive from the U.S. government when a service member dies in conflict.) The play measures the impact of the war in Iraq on one community while also assessing the broader national divide between those who are serving in Iraq, or have loved ones who do, and those who comment publicly on the war. The play is part of a larger trend of playwrights using the theater to explore the consequences of the war, both on personal relationships and on the national consciousness.
"For people who hang on to labels, to conservative and liberal, and left and right, there's this idea in metropolitan places where these families are unfortunately statistics," Tisdale said. "I don't even think that people who lost people in 9/11 align themselves with people who are losing people now, when it's still violent death and it's still personal trauma that they are going through -- regardless of who ordered the killing, they are losing loved ones. This is a backdrop, it's a piece about mourning and moving on and trying to understand that whole process."
Tisdale has spent the past two years traveling between New York and Ohio to meet with family members. He worked closely with four central Ohio families, who invited him into their homes and allowed him to document their grieving process. Tisdale, 32, a Julliard-trained actor who has produced several other plays, took a decidedly journalistic approach to writing the play, recording family members talking about their lost husbands and sons and reworking the material into a dramatic script. He says that his work is not meant to be political, but a way to explore the emotional and personal toll many Americans are coping with. "This piece can reach beyond the families of the 3,500 troops who have been killed," Tisdale said. "The fact that we are going at a rate that is, this year alone if you break it down, is three deaths a day -- that's like having an epidemic at your doorstep and not paying attention to it."
The resulting work features an interviewer character, who listens as family and community members talk about coping with the aftermath of death. One character, Chief Jeff "Goob" Garver of the Dresden, Ohio, Police Department, recalls sitting in his patrol car, after the family of Sgt. Bradley Harper was informed of his death:
"So, I never heard the first word they spoke, have no idea what they told 'em or how they told 'em … But I do know the moment [inhale] that they -- that they received the message and understood it. [pause] Because the noises that come outta that house … [pause] I will never forget as long as I live, and they went on and on and on. Then there would be a pause … and then it would start again."Tisdale says that while journalism provides an obviously valuable tool for communicating news about the war and even the personal stories of its casualties, theater is more adept -- and humane -- at bringing the war into audience members' psyches. "I think in journalism and on shows like Oprah and sometimes just in plain documentary-style filmmaking, there is an exploitative aspect in so much, as you put a camera on someone where they break down," he said. "Those people can't do anything about being immortalized in that way. In some ways, I don't want to see that. In theater, the buffer -- knowing that these were actual words that were spoken, but there's an interpretation by an actor -- there's safety for both sides, a kindness really. That's what art does.."
Tisdale is not the only writer interested in using the theater to explore the consequences of the war in Iraq. Christopher Shinn's Dying City, which opened at Lincoln Center, tells the story of a young therapist whose husband died in Iraq, and her confrontation with his identical twin brother. Like Tisdale, Shinn was interested in how theater could be used to break through the national polarization he perceived over the war in Iraq. "It's part of the blue state, red state dichotomy," Shinn said in a phone interview. "How do we get beyond stridency on both sides, how to we get beyond the psychological rigidity. There's always been a split in America, because very conservative politics and a very idealized image as a progressive nation -- both perspectives are really limited. [We have] to have an honest conversation about what we're doing. I wanted to find a way to talk about the war that dealt with what I felt was happening in people's psyches, because that's something journalism can't do so well."
Shinn's play, which has received rave reviews and sold out many performances, is still limited to a New York audience. But both Shinn and Tisdale hope that their work will eventually travel on to high schools and colleges across the nation. The Laramie Project, about the reaction to the 1998 murder of Matthew Shepard in Laramie, Wyoming -- widely considered to be a hate crime motivated by homophobia -- is now one of the most produced plays in U.S. high schools. "You know you never will reach as many people as a film, but you will reach them in a deeper way," Shinn said. "This is something we need to keep thinking about forever. That's really it. It's not something that goes away or that we can contain. Traumas like these never go away."
Family members portrayed in Goldstar, Ohio, also would like to see their stories retold in U.S. high schools and colleges. They say that working with Tisdale and allowing him to witness their grief and mourning has actually facilitated their own healing. Carol Hoffman of Pataskala, Ohio, whose son Justin was a sergeant killed in Iraq, said that her family allowed Tisdale into their home and found their "hearts etched together by our loss." Hoffman hopes that audience members will "understand that it could have been their experience too, whether or not they believe in the war."
Her husband Chuck hopes that the play will bring the war home for those who have avoided dealing with its effect across the nation. "The part that's problematic for me is that most people know somebody who has a family members who's been in combat operations," he said, "and yet, they don't ask. This particular medium is really much more realistic and gets at the real essence of the human condition."
Carol says she wonders sometimes what her son Justin would think about being a main character in a play. "He was very humble, and yet very strong -- strong in the way he loved his family," she said. "And he wasn't the type of guy who wanted to grab the glory or the limelight. Still, I think he would be pleased his life mattered, and that so many positive things have come to the peopl he loved, despite all the pain."
