Asian American Drama: 9 Plays from the Multiethnic Landscape Book

Mostly interesting as a work of adaptation, a writer re-working material to try and reach a different audience. Packer's reporting on the Iraq War for the New Yorker is, I think, excellent. I read "War After the War," "The Lesson of Tal Afar," and "Betrayed," which this play is based on, before reading this, and each advances a point of view on the conflict that sits at an extreme remove from television images and commentary: the war in Packer's words is a mixture of miscommunication (the American administration stubbornly keeping the course, hoping to not lose face, though Bush and other heads are very distant, inessential figures here), ignorance (the only progress toward peace is found through a general who trains his soldiers through role-playing and reading), and blindness (Iraqi interpreters and citizens point out ways to deal with insurgents and help those who need it; no one answers or pays attention).

The play is simplified, though it preserves many of the incidents from "Betrayed," right down to the format/structure of the play, which is staged mostly like an interview (with the audience standing in the position of the interviewer). I found it less dramatic, though, than reading the full ~15 page (single-spaced, small type ' this is the New Yorker) article, and in some cases only understood the situation in the play because I'd done the other reading.