Oregon Humanities

Telling It Straight

Eugene’s Telling Project goes to D.C.

Caroline Cummins

Tension. Laughter. Absurdity. Sadness. Connection. Over and over, theater directors strive to bring these things to an audience. In the Telling Project, a “witness theater” production begun in Eugene in 2007, neophyte actors—all members of the U.S. military who have served mostly in the Gulf, Afghanistan, and Iraq wars—do just that, drawing on their firsthand experiences.

Boredom. Fatigue. Enthusiasm. Frustration. In a video of the Eugene production, which traveled to Washington, D.C., in November 2009, a man recalls taking the edge off his overseas posting with a recurring practical joke: posing a Strawberry Shortcake pillow next to sleeping comrades, then snapping photos of them. Drool was a plus. A woman recalls a superior officer, late on a lonely night watch, making a pass at her—even though both of them were married at the time.

“I was working with people who had dealt with both the extremes of boredom and the extremes of terror and grief that most actors never experience,” recalls John Schmor, the University of Oregon theater professor who directed the Eugene production. “It isn’t about ‘pretend’—it is about a truth in action. And it’s rough.”

After Eugene, the performance was re-created in Portland, with new actors telling new stories. Now the project is going nationwide, with versions under way in California and Mississippi. The goal, as the group’s website (thetellingproject.org) makes clear, is to have a project in every state.

Terror. Grief. Return. “They were waiting in line when it happened—chow line. They were just waiting to eat,” recalls Shirley Cortez, a Navy electrician on night watch, about the bombing of the U.S.S. Cole. “One of the people that died that day, she was my age, and I remember she’d just found out she was pregnant. And I remember thinking, you know, I bet they didn’t wake up this morning and think, ‘This is a good day to die.’”