No millennial worth his iPhone remembers life before social media. While previous generations’ warfighters wrote letters or phoned home over spotty connections, Marines today can post on Instagram photos of themselves sitting atop cans of ammunition. In 2010, the photojournalist Teru Kuwayama and his collaborators embedded in Afghanistan to start a Facebook page for the First Battalion, Eighth Marines to communicate with loved ones. Far from resulting in just another live-stream of minutiae, their Basetrack project became a way for deployed troops to maintain relationships with their families. The resulting trove of photos and videos provide ample fodder for “Basetrack Live” — the onstage story of one corporal’s deployment and homecoming, and the effects on his family.
For both the battalion and a nation’s artists, self-reflection occurred stunningly quickly through the use of social media. Anne Hamburger, executive producer of En Garde Arts, the company behind “Basetrack Live,” said she felt it was important to document the human side of going to war, without sensationalizing the experience.
“The issues are so complex” when an ordinary person deploys, Ms. Hamburger said. Her biggest challenge for the production, which is showing at the Harvey Theater, Brooklyn Academy of Music, and will be going on a national tour, was paring down the “incredible wealth of material,” she said.
Ms. Hamburger reached out through Facebook, gathering more than 100 respondents and conducting three dozen interviews to cull images and video for the project. Every word in “Basetrack Live” is taken from interviews with Marines or members of their families.
This citizen journalism captures the truth of troops’ feelings during deployment, including graffiti about pornography, and profane, funny rules for standing watch and cleaning toilets. The images chosen for the production reflect the Marines’ brotherhood, including an impressive assortment of tattoos. Because of the authentic, emotion-rich material, the Marines are painted neither as heroes nor victims.
The plot delves into the relationship between Cpl. A. J. Czubai and his wife, Melissa. Corporal Czubai is played by Tyler La Marr, a former Marine Corps sergeant and the founder of the Society of Artistic Veterans. Mr. La Marr is quick to point out that his experiences as a signals intelligence analyst in Iraq were distinctly different from Corporal Czubai’s infantry deployments to Afghanistan.
Initially, Mr. La Marr was worried that Corporal Czubai would be angry “because a pogue is telling his story!” he said in an interview, referring to military slang for “a person other than grunt,” or infantryman. But talking with Corporal Czubai helped, and the actor acknowledged that his boot camp training, with its ethos of “every Marine a rifleman,” gave him a head start on the role.
Melissa Czubai, played by Ashley Bloom, wrestles with a lack of control over situations engineered by the Marine Corps, including A. J.’s inability to be present for the birth of their daughter because of his predeployment training. “Basetrack Live” also includes the perspectives of other wives and girlfriends, and that of one Marine’s mother, to illustrate the war’s toll on families.
The web of relationships also highlights the desire of civilians to hear from Marines in close-to-real-time, bringing to light the space between deployed and home environments, and the nuanced human drama that it spans. Social media’s rapid communications can be a mixed blessing, as worries on the home front can be transmitted to deployed troops, and electrons can convey flaring tempers in both directions. Of greatest concern were erroneous reports of casualties on Facebook, which only served to accelerate the rumor mill among wives and girlfriends. In Corporal Czubai’s case, his wife learned of his best friend’s death before he did, even though he was in a neighboring company in Afghanistan.
The speed of modern life, reflected in social media, can also be jarring to nerves accustomed to a contained, mission-focused environment. After being wounded in a firefight, Corporal Czubai is sent back to the United States, while his comrades carry on in Afghanistan. This loss of his unit’s camaraderie disorients him. Overwhelmed by paranoia and guilt, he drinks, buys an array of weapons, threatens suicide and struggles with a strained marriage. He eventually accepts counseling from the Department of Veterans Affairs, but the play avoids a saccharine ending.
Now out of the Marine Corps and studying for a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering at the University of Texas at Arlington, Corporal Czubai has seen several performances of “BaseTrack Live” and found the adaptation of his story “captivating.”
Ms. Hamburger said that she intended for the show to walk a fine line: conveying emotion without being overly sentimental about the participants’ experiences. The music — original compositions by Edward Bilous, Michelle DiBucci and Greg Kalember — blends a variety of styles: the rush of initial deployment to Afghanistan mixes powerful hip-hop with tribal tunes, while the disorientation of combat is illustrated by crashing rock and bright lights.
Using authentic videos and images, “Basetrack Live” offers a realistic perspective on relationships when one partner has gone to war, and how, after the long road home, social media can be a useful tool to build a sense of community. The wives and girlfriends of those serving in the First Battalion, Eighth Marines, who found each other via the project’s Facebook page, offered one another support, including tactics for waking sleeping Marines with hair-trigger reactions. And many of the Marines, themselves, stayed in touch with one another long after returning home, and were trading bear hugs at Tuesday night’s performance.
In future wars, the speed of communication will only get faster. Short of hologramming into combat, service members’ loved ones cannot get much closer than connecting daily via social media. Emotionally, this can blur the lines between battlefield and home front. “Basetrack Live” ably captures this juxtaposition and its aftermath, affording viewers a fresh look at war’s realities and at the challenges of coming home.
“Basetrack Live” was adapted by Jason Grote in collaboration with Seth Bockley and Anne Hamburger. It is playing at the Harvey Theater, Brooklyn Academy of Music, (651 Fulton St, Brooklyn) through Saturday.
Teresa Fazio was a Marine Corps officer from 2002 to 2006 and deployed to Iraq. She lives and works in New York, and is writing a memoir about a relationship during deployment.