Sand Storm

There is a phenomenal play running in Alexandria, VA right now at Metro Stage called Sandstorm: Stories from the Front. The playwright is a marine who served in the Iraq War, and the play is a series of 10 monologues that encapsulate some of the experiences of troops on the ground there.

S and I got tickets on recommendation from an Iraq War veteran we met last week. He said that this play articulated his experiences about the war with exquisite precision.

The performance was incredibly powerful. It's still impossibly difficult for me to grasp what it would be like to be in the middle of a war zone, one in which civilians are ever-present. But these monologues illustrated some of the idioms you hear about war, that it takes away a person's humanity, that the worst parts of human nature are encouraged, that humanity does have a way of resurfacing in unexpected ways in the middle of it all, and that war leaves deep, vicious scars on the human psyche.

It's been disgustingly easy for me to tune out what is going on in Iraq and Afghanistan. I read about the insurgency and the car bombings, about Ms. Sheehan's protest and Bush's speeches in Utah, but it is remarkably simple to chalk these up to news. This play was an excellent, and for me much needed, reminder about the human reality behind the reporting.