Acclaim stuns Temple University students in Iraq play

Nothing like it had ever happened to Temple University theater students, at least as far as anyone could remember. But that was before the Iraq war, and the voices it summoned up for journalist Yvonne Latty.

Now In Conflict, the play based Latty's book of the same name, has blossomed from a Temple student production, first staged last fall, to an international phenomenon that has stunned and inspired just about everyone connected with it.

On Aug. 1, the play will open - with all 11 members of the original student cast portraying Iraq war veterans - at the super-charged Edinburgh Fringe Festival for a run through Aug. 25. On Sept. 3, it returns to Temple's Randall Theatre for 12 performances as part of the Live Arts Festival/Philly Fringe.

And when that ends, the set comes down, is loaded on a truck and rolls up to New York City's Barrow Street Theater in the West Village, where previews begin Sept. 18 for an open-ended off-Broadway run.

"It's unbelievable," said Latty, a former Philadelphia Daily News reporter whose collection of interviews with Iraq war vets inspired and guided the show. "I feel like I'm in a state of shock. What these kids have created, and the number of lives they've been able to touch - young lives - is incredible."

The students are a bit discombobulated themselves.

"I don't think it's hit any of us yet," said Stan Demidoff, a Temple senior. "It's surreal."

Demidoff, 22, portrays Cpl. Alex Pressman, a Brooklyn native who took a smoking break one day and lost his foot to an improvised explosive device.

Joy Notono, 22, who graduated this year, portrays Maj. Tracey Ringo, a medical officer in Baghdad who Notono said approached her duties "with compassion" for soldiers and civilians alike: "That's her unique perspective in the play, a really strong sense of compassion. She worked with women, civilians working in the clinic that she worked at, and you can hear that in her voice, her gentleness and also her faith."

"I feel very privileged," Notono said of her participation in the play. "I'm feeling more and more responsiblity towards the vets. . . . And I'm actually very serious about volunteering my time with them."

Douglas C. Wager, artistic director at the Temple School of Communications and Theater and head of the graduate directing program, adapted In Conflict for the stage, directed the production and, by all accounts, urged countless out-of-town theater friends to come in for a look during its October run at Temple.

Normally, with a student production, that would have been that. But Wager felt the students' work was so good, and the production was so powerful, that In Conflict deserved a longer life before a broader audience.

Drawing on his contacts from more than two decades at the acclaimed Arena Stage in Washington, and years in film and television, Wager interested producers in New York and elsewhere, including New Haven, Conn., where the company performed the play at the Long Wharf Theatre in January.

Allan Buchman, producing artistic director of the Culture Project, a New York theater organization focused on social and political projects, decided In Conflict presented both an intense dramatic experience and a mine-strewn moral landscape. He told Wager that he wanted it for New York - and that he wanted the original student cast members, who created it, to reprise their roles.

Those actors who are still at Temple will receive academic credit for their off-Broadway appearances, and university officials said their financial aid and scholarship status will not be adversely affected during the run. (New York living arrangements are still being worked out, and actors will receive stipends from the Culture Project; officials said union issues with Actors Equity largely have been resolved.)

"It's unprecedented," said Wager, who at the moment is trying to raise funds to get his students to Scotland for the weeks of the Fringe Festival, a costly enterprise.

Temple is providing some funding for the trip, but not all, and while students have raised money on their own, the company still needs about $20,000 to cover its costs. Whatever else it may be, Edinburgh during the Fringe is not cheap.

No one is backing off, however.

"We're moving into brand-new territory with what it's turning into," said Wager. "It's basically amazing. The students will also be involved with the Culture Project in arranging constituent talk-back programs involving gays in the military, women in the military, Latinos in the military, PTSD [post traumatic stress disorder] vets, wounds, injuries - all kinds of things that raise the question of how do we bring these people home and care for them for the rest of their lives."

In Conflict speaks to such issues with the raw and often matter-of-fact voices of actual veterans.

"The core ethos [explored by the play] is, what is the nature of service and patriotism in America in the 21st century," said Wager. "I've come to really admire and honor these people. Some had horrific experiences. Some had moving experiences and feel good about what they did. Some were broken by the experience."

It all comes down, he said, to "what does America stand for?"

At a meeting with his actors last week, Wager tried to focus their energies on the main mission.

"There's a lot of moving parts to this thing - financially, emotionally, spiritually," he said. "You've got to remember why we're doing it. It is embracing the idea that as citizen artists you are seeking to raise awareness and help ease the transition of veterans who have served."

That is a point that speaks directly to Demidoff.

"All I wanted to do was change people's lives - and I can't believe I have the opportunity to do that at 22," he said. "Support of the troops, that's what the show is based on. Not the war. The troops. I don't think I'll ever be this lucky again."