Arts :: Theater
Don’t ask? Do tell by Sam Baltrusis
contributing writerThursday May 28, 2009It’s Memorial Day and Iraq War veteran Jeff Key, currently in Boston to promote his acclaimed one-man show The Eyes of Babylon, has a take-no-prisoners tone when it comes to the basic human rights the warrior-turned-playwright believed he was fighting for when he signed up for the military in 2000.
"As we do this interview, there’s a young gay kid right now seriously contemplating suicide," he says, sitting outside of J.P. Licks in Mission Hill wearing a black "Iraq Veterans Against the War" t-shirt. "The people who claim that homosexuality is an abomination are the same people who perpetuate the atrocities currently happening in the Middle East. Just last week in Afghanistan our bombs burnt the skin off innocent women and children," Key says, with tears welling up as he speaks.
"This whole bizarre concept that they weave together as being the righteous position which includes bombing innocent people and oppressing gay people is something right out 1930s Germany," he emotes. "When will it end?"
Ask him to comment on hot-button topics ranging from President Barack Obama’s waning pledge to overturn the Clinton-era policy of "Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell" or California’s decision to uphold the Prop. 8 ban on same-sex marriage, and the openly gay Marine’s simmering passion transforms into rage.
"Gay marriage is a great lightning rod because it poses a simple question: Are we Americans like everybody else or are we not? It’s so peculiar that gay men are labeled as weak, that we’re the ’weaker sex.’ When we ban together, there isn’t a stronger group. If all of the alphabet groups, all of the LGBTQs out there in the world, stick together ... there’s no stopping us."
The 43-year-old activist continues, "If you were on the frontline and you had to choose between Bill O’Reilly or RuPaul to fight beside you in a war, who would you choose? It’s a no-brainer."
It’s obvious that Key is mad as hell. But dig a little a deeper, beyond his bombastic rhetoric and menacing physique, and the Marine’s softer side slowly begins to emerge. Within a body that could kill on command, is the sensitive soul of a poet.
"If you were on the frontline and you had to choose between Bill O’Reilly or RuPaul to fight beside you in a war, who would you choose? It’s a no-brainer." "Yes, there’s a hypersensitive side to me," he admits later. "But there are a lot of sensitive straight guys too. The gay activist in me is all about my patriotism. There’s a lot invested in keeping gay people down and I’m sick and tired of it."
In The Eyes of Babylon, Key uses the journal he keeps to narrate the journey that began with his response to 9/11 and ends with his decision to come out in an interview with Paula Zahn on CNN, and ultimately the resignation letter he pens to the Marines. He’s a walking contradiction: A gay man who labels himself "naively patriotic" but cringes when a group of Marines he calls "The Cruels" attack Iraqi children and animals. He says he’s a peace advocate but longs for combat to break the day-to-day monotony of life in the desert.
However, it’s Key’s lyrically jagged prose and ability to let it all hang out, including a provocative full-frontal nude scene at the beginning of the play, that ultimately soars. In Key’s world, life is full of contradictions.
The Alabama-bred playwright, who lives with his husband in Salt Lake City, says it’s his ability to shine a light on all of his emotional battle scars that has won over fans from all walks of life. "I’ve gotten overwhelming support from every unexpected source you could imagine ... straight-redneck Baptists, deployed guys in Iraq and even Muslims," he says. "There has been a handful of negative things hurled at me, but I don’t pay attention to them."
In 2007, Showtime aired a documentary following Key’s spiritual quest called Semper Fi: One Marine’s Journey. "The documentary has been on Showtime about 100 times now," he recalls. "It’s weird, I had three people recognize me on the T this week and there are even people who recognize me from the CNN interview, which is bizarre because it was a five-minute interview that aired in 2004."
Ultimately, Key says the war in Iraq is a metaphor for the battle he fought within his own wounded psyche. "A lot of people believe going into the play that it’s such a downer. It’s not," he says, trying to dispel some of the initial misconceptions theatergoers have about The Eyes of Babylon. "If anything, it’s more of a study about my journey than it’s about being gay in the military or the war itself. It’s about my spiritual journey. And during that journey, there’s a lot of laughter along the way."
Jeff Key will perform The Eyes of Babylon from Thursday, May 28 through Sunday, May 31, and Thursday, June 4 through Saturday, June 6. Sunday show 2:00 p.m., all others 8:00 p.m. Boston Playwrights’ Theatre (949 Commonwealth Ave., Boston), tickets $25 via bu.edu/bpt.
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