INTERVIEW: ‘American Soldier’ honors the sacrifice of veterans
Photo: The American Soldier stars Douglas Taurel, who also wrote the solo piece. Photo courtesy of Dinna Bush Photography / Provided by KSA PR with permission.
The American Soldier, a play that has run regionally in the United States, is finally receiving its off-Broadway premiere. The solo work is written by and starring Douglas Taurel, who will be performing in the play for a three-week run at the Gural Theater at A.R.T./New York Theatres in New York City, courtesy of NewYorkRep. Performances continue until Sunday, Dec. 21.
“Well, the spark was cumulative,” Taurel said in a recent phone interview about the inspiration for the piece. “It was a bunch of different sparks, but the main spark was coming out of the North Tower during 9/11. I lived in Hoboken, and when I was starting out as an actor in 2000, I was a personal trainer. And I used to train out of a gym called New York Health & Racquet Club on Whitehall Street, and, yeah, that’s what started the spark. I became really obsessed with what was happening in the Middle East. I started reading stories in the newspaper, and that’s when I really started learning about guys who were doing multiple deployments who couldn’t pay their bills.”
At that time, more than 20 years ago, Taurel began to learn about post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, and the many difficulties that active service members and veterans faced, both during war and after coming home.
“I just wanted a form of activism or a voice,” the actor said. “I wanted to let people know that we were sending multiple men and women off to war currently, and it wasn’t fair the way they were being treated. That’s kind of what started the play and the research, which was pretty intense. It took years of research. I probably researched the play for almost 10 years. As you know, research is a double-edged sword. It’s like an ocean. You never know when to stop. There is no stop sign that says, ‘You’ve reached the end of your research.’ You keep going and going and going until you pull the ripcord, and you kind of stop.”
What eventually transitioned Taurel from the research phase of the project over to the writing stage was when he hooked up with some directors, and they began to give him some good-old-fashioned deadlines.
“One of the things for me was I started working with some directors, and they were like, ‘OK, you have to pick some material. We have a rehearsal coming up. I want to see what you have. Pick something,’” he remembers. “So deadlines are always what start forcing you to stop. OK, I have enough material. I need to work on something that I’m interested in, that resonates with me and show it, and then you start making really executive decisions, cutting out your darlings and picking the most powerful pieces that you feel will resonate with the audience.”
That’s how The American Soldier, which was originally directed by Padraic Lillis, was formed into a 90-minute work, but the first few drafts were much shorter. Over the years, Taurel kept adding content and more stories.
“When I first put it together, it was 20 minutes,” said Taurel, who also appeared in Lifetime’s The Gabby Petito Story. “I performed it the first time for like eight people on a rainy weekend. I performed at the Bowery Poetry Club at a festival called Mano a Mano Festival, and I needed 20 minutes. … OK, I got 20 minutes. Let me figure out what I want to do. Let me put it together and do it, and from there, you have a kernel. You have something you can build from. You start getting, as an author, an idea of what’s culturally resonating with the audience and the direction you want to go in. And, you know, you show it to colleagues and people in the business. You collectively get an idea of what works and what doesn’t work.”
Now, the finished product tells the story of 14 people, including men, women and children, who have been impacted by wars throughout the years, according to press notes. The piece jumps around to different time periods, some contemporary, some from the 20th century, some from the early days of the United States. For Taurel, this play fills a void that is present in the theatrical world.
“The word patriotism, at least in the art world, has become a taboo subject for us to talk about for some reason,” Taurel said. “I’ve performed the play in very, very blue parts of the country and very, very red parts of the country. The reaction is always the same. It’s always, ‘Thank you, and thank you for honoring us and our families and our veterans who serve.’ At the end of the day, both blue and red have died for this country and continue to die and serve for this country.”
He added: “I’ve been blessed as a person, as a human, as a father, as an artist, as an actor because of America, and that blessing comes from the men and women who have served and who have died and protected the country. I feel it doesn’t matter what side of the political aisle you’re on, I think we should honor that service because they gave us freedom, and they gave us voice. As cliché as it is, they gave us everything that allows us to complain and bicker and protest that normally in a lot of other places you can’t.”
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
The American Soldier, written by and starring Douglas Taurel, continues through Sunday, Dec. 21, at the Gural Theater at A.R.T./New York Theatres in New York City. Click here for more information and tickets.
