Gunshots rang out and soldiers patrolled on Veterans Day at the corner of Third and Florida St., but all the guns were plastic and all the soldiers were actors.
Port City Project, a recently-formed acting and production company in Baton Rouge, held its first performance of the play “Tracers” at Richoux’s on Tuesday night.
The play was created entirely by a group of Vietnam veterans and follows six soldiers from boot camp to to the jungles of Vietnam to post-war America, but not in that order.
Flashbacks, monologues and expression of the characters’ inner thoughts make the play a surrealistic one that is “not unlike a nightmare,” the project’s Managing Director Leah Star said.
“While each character has his own opinions of the war and of his role in it, the play itself, without any outside influence, seems to say ‘This is who we are. This is who we were. And this is how it happened,'” she said.
The play also was the first large production that Port City Project has undertaken, Star said.
A group of LSU students started the project when they decided the performing arts environment in Baton Rouge needed a little nurturing, she said.
“When ‘Tracers’ was brought up, it seemed like exactly the right thing to do,” Star said. “And with it opening on Veterans Day, it was an opportunity to connect with the community.”
Michael Oscar Indest, Jr., producing director of the project and producer of “Tracers,” said the company chose this play partly because of the position the country is in now.
“It portrays things as they were without any form of judgment,” he said. “We hope the community will come to their own conclusion about the way things are.”
Indest said the project decided this play also would be a way to connect the college generation with things they are not regularly exposed to.
“We will understand greater things about ourselves because we are showing humans,” he said. “We are getting closer to gaining a grain of understanding of what happened.”
Though Port City Project is not affiliated with LSU, its members are primarily LSU students and, by trying to help the community, the project hopes to get more students involved, Indest said.
Michael Jeffirs, a Vietnam veteran who served in 1969, said the play captured many of the horrors soldiers like himself faced both during and after the conflict.
“There was a war,” he said. “And then all the guys came home to another war.”
Jeffirs said he sees himself and other veterans dealing with many of the post-war problems presented by the characters in “Tracers.”
“I’ve had three wives and 35 jobs, and it’s typical of a Vietnam veteran,” he said. “I used to drink a case of beer and half a fifth of whiskey a day.”
Jeffirs said many students are not exposed to the concept of the Vietnam War in school, and this play could help expose them to the way it truly was and is.
“If people who have never been in the military, or have only read the two pages in their history book they have about Vietnam, come to this,” he said, “(the actors) will do more good than we could do in 25 years.”
Indest said LSU students in particular can benefit from the performance.
“It will give them a certain awareness that, back in the 60s and 70s, tens of thousands of students weren’t students,” he said. “They didn’t have the opportunity to go to college, so they were off fighting.”
While the project had a small amount of donations and received some money from businesses buying ads in the program, the largest amount of funding for the play came from loans by members of the organization.
Gavin Robinson, a theater junior and the actor who plays the character of Dinky Dau, said he decided to audition for the play because of other people he knew that were already involved with the project.
The experience after he landed the part, however, has given the play a new meaning to him, he said.
“Tracers” will run through Nov. 15 and Nov. 18-20. It will run again Dec. 4, 9, 11, 13, and 14. Showtimes are at 7:30 p.m., except Dec. 14 when the show will play at 2:30 p.m. Tickets are $18 for adults, $12 for students and seniors, and $10 for veterans and servicemen. Group discounts of 20 percent can be obtained for groups of 10 or more. To purchase tickets in advance, call
225-757- 8155.