One Father's War Remembered
Playwright Turns Art Herzberg's D-Day Into Drama
Last updated Friday, May 2, 2008 9:54 AM CDT in Weekend
By Becca Bacon Martin
The Morning News
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Art Herzberg should have died, a dozen times over.
Herzberg's daughter, Amy, a drama professor at the University of Arkansas, says for her father, World War II always seemed more like a Jerry Lewis comedy than a John Wayne drama - at least, those were the stories she heard growing up in Phoenix. However, "My Father's War," playwright Bob Ford's original script premiering tonight at TheatreSquared, reveals the rest of the story.
"People should know what war is like," the World War II veteran says. "Maybe if they understood it, there wouldn't be any more wars."
"Understanding what it was like for him is impossible," argues Ford, his son-in-law. "We all know it's impossible, but we can try. That's what theater is about - to propel us into the struggles and the emotions of someone else's life."
That Herzberg came home at all is a miracle. That he was "the world's funniest dad," able to make the war real for his three daughters while keeping the real horror of it to himself, is what makes his story different.
"I told Bob when he was going to make this play that everything that could possibly be said had been said, in the movies and on TV," says Herzberg, now 82. "But evidently people can't get enough about World War II, because it keeps coming back and back and back."
It was not a topic that interested Ford particularly - until a movie called "Saving Private Ryan" changed his mind.
"I grew up during Vietnam, where I developed my opinion about all things war," he says. "It was really easy to be anti-war then. A lot of us had our eyes opened by 'Saving Private Ryan.' We all knew there was a cost, but the film made us realize there were guys just like us over there."
Herzberg wasn't "just like" most of the soldiers he served with, however. He was Jewish, a difference that reared its head in everything from harmless comments - "Don't go all Hebrew on me, Herzberg" - to the time he was volunteered for yet another suicide mission "because you're the only Jew in the outfit - and that's one too many."
The anti-Semitism, ironic in a war against the Nazis, came as no surprise to Herzberg, he says. "I was raised in a neighborhood where I was the only Jewish kid, went to a school where I was the only Jewish kid - outside my sister. The Depression was blamed on the Jews. The Jews were accused of killing Jesus. I had to fight my way home from school. But when I made friends with a guy and he found out I was Jewish," Herzberg's voice trails off. "I never understood why I wasn't the same guy he liked until he found out I was Jewish."
As charming as Herzberg is now, his daughter says he was "charmed, completely charmed" during the war. He earned the nickname "Combat" after spending three and a half months as "first scout," a lethal job that usually saw the soldier occupying it dead in a couple of weeks. Herzberg says "you just did what you were supposed to do" and "after the battle was over, I'd stop and say 'Holy mackerel, I could have been killed!'"
"I can't remember a time when I didn't think these were the most fascinating stories I had ever heard," Amy Herzberg says. "But as I got older, I began to see more behind them. I always thought something should be done with them."
Amy taped her dad telling stories - hours and hours of stories - and brought them home to show Ford, a playwright and novelist in addition to being her husband. "The moment I started hearing them, I knew they were filled with potential," he recalls, so he was interested but not compelled - until the couple took a side trip from London to Normandy seven years ago. Art Herzberg landed on Utah Beach, and Amy wanted to know the details, calling her dad from a pay phone at the museum.
"It must have been 3 or 4 in the morning in Phoenix," Ford recalls. Amy says she finally let her father go to bed, but "I couldn't wait for him to wake up so we could talk again!"
"It was in that moment that the play was born," Ford remembers. "I knew it had to be Amy telling her dad's story - and in fact, playing her dad. I had no idea how I was going to do it at that point, but I knew it was about Amy needing to understand her father's war.
"It really came alive emotionally in Normandy."
For a year, "My Father's War" has been coming to life on stage, a process of development that has included input from the Arkansas Playwrights Workshop, a grant from the Arkansas Arts Council, the feedback from a public reading last May and the daunting task of doing justice to a real man's real stories.
"I was taught in acting that one of the things you never say is, 'My character would never do this,'" Amy Herzberg says. "But I feel the obligation to get the spirit of my dad right."
Ford also wants the play to appeal to audiences who don't know Art or Amy. "It has to be larger than that," he says, to make it to Off-Broadway in New York, which is the ultimate hope for everyone involved. "It is timely," Ford says. "It speaks the most to our generation of anything I've written."
Set on a raked stage, with pillars of metal suggesting trees, "My Father's War" uses Amy Herzberg and four actors to tell about 25 of Art Herzberg's stories. As the play opens, she has come to visit a spot in the Ardennes - in Belgium - the scene of one of the more brutal phases of the invasion. It's the place where the senior Herzberg had an encounter with a young German soldier - one that becomes the spine of the story, as Amy struggles to understand her father and his experiences.
For both Ford and his wife, "My Father's War" is about understanding, remembering - and thanking - the World War II generation as their numbers dwindle. For Art Herzberg, it's obviously a lot more personal.
"It's hard for me to say this to you," he prefaces. "But because of the way I grew up, in a neighborhood with no Jewish people, it was my goal in life to prove to everybody that I'm no different than you are. I wanted to be liked. I wanted to be one of the guys.
"It doesn't matter who you are, what color your skin is, what church you go to, we're all the same."
On Stage
World Premiere
'My Father's War'
Dates & Showtimes: 8 p.m. today, Saturday, May 8-10 and May 15-17 and 2 p.m. Sunday, May 11 and May 18
Venue: TheatreSquared at the Walton Arts Center's Nadine Baum Studios in Fayetteville
Admission: $18 seniors, $22 adults
For reservations, call 445-6333 or visit theatresquared.org.
Playbill
'My Father's War'
The Cast: Amy Herzberg, Abbey Molyneux, Jason Engstrom, Justin Scheuer and Kris Stoker
The Crew: Alice Jankell, director; Shawn Irish, set and lighting design; Ruby Billig, costume design; Richard Rew, sound design; Ashley Butler, stage manager; Steve Wilhelm, technical director
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