House, Divided
 La Tempestad
 The Ballad of John Wesley Reed
 Girl Science
 The Allure of Oriental Wisdom
 Memorial Day (formerly Varia)
 Pride of the Lion
 The Dostoyevsky Man


 Monica for Chanukah
 Angie and Arnie Sanguine
 Edward and Ellie Supine
 The Lion Eats His Lunch
 The Lion in His Lair
 The Lion Leaves His Mark
 Prayers


 But Who's Counting?
 Emma Goldman Imagines the Millenium


 Just Before the War Between the Plates
 I Can Handle That


 Talking  with Lee Blessing

...with Tom Coash
...with Mary Fengar Gail
...with Richard Kalinowsky
...with Jamie Pachino
...with David Rambo
...with Jason Sherman
...with Naomi Wallace
...with Tom Gibbons
...with Dick Goldberg

InterAct: IN THE HEART OF AMERICA makes a strong statement about the legacy of violence and war, and how they infiltrate memory and tie us to their consequences across time and space. Can you talk a little about how you came to write this play, and how this particular set of characters suggested themselves to you?

Naomi Wallace: I wrote the play a couple years after the first Gulf War. I was very angry about what had been done to that country. But researching the war properly took me two years. It was a good thing I waited. Anger can drive one to write a play but not always a good one. As a writer I am interested in the interconnectedness of things. Violence and politics. Racism and war. Class and desire. To study a war, to try and understand that war within a wider context, one has to also look at the wars that came before it. With IN THE HEART OF AMERICA, I was interested in the 'American way' of war, how language is used to inspire and underline aggression, how racism is used to dehumanize the 'enemy', how the language of war is made erotic and enticing. War is, on one level, a simple question of how to best tear as many bodies apart in as little time as possible. It's not about freedom and liberation. The war against Iraq in 1991 certainly was not. Neither was this more recent war.

InterAct: The cross-cultural conflicts depicted in IN THE HEART OF AMERICA are quite prescient. Many immigrants from the Muslim world find themselves in the same position as Fairouz and Remzi - struggling with the desire to become assimilated Americans while, at the same time, wanting to retain their cultural identity. In the years since you wrote this play, these issues have become even more acute as the US has become more and more alienated from the Muslim world. Can you talk a little about your view of this? If you were approaching this subject today, would you see this any differently? Would you write it any differently?

Naomi Wallace: I think that while the play deals with Remzi's wish to 'become an American', it is also about the irony of what that means. For Remzi, becoming American also means killing other Arabs, other peoples who are not white. We live today in a virulently racist culture, and Muslims are receiving much of the worst this. But this is not happening in a vacuum. There are many progressive anti-war and anti-racist forces aligning themselves against these forces. I don't know what I would write if I wrote this play today. Perhaps Boxler, who represents Lt. Calley's spirit, would not be alone. He might be joined by some US bombers from the war against Afghanistan.

InterAct: I know that you started your writing career as a poet, and that you were encouraged in your move to playwriting by Bob Hedley at the University of Iowa. I feel there is a lot of poetry in this script. There is a lot of imagistic language here, and connections between ideas are often suggestive and associative rather than being completely clarified in discourse. In other words, the play works in much the same way poetry works. Do you think of yourself as a poet? Can you talk a little about the relationship between the form and the content of this play? What about this subject matter attracted you to a non-linear structure for this play? Do you see your plays as poetic expressions?

Naomi Wallace: I don't see my plays as poetic expression. They are plays with a language that, I hope, embodies what's moving around up there on stage. I realize that some people see my work as poetic. I prefer to think of my language as hard and muscular. Poetic has a squishy ring to it. Yes, my language is distilled and perhaps at times heightened. But that's how I hear the world, or how the world hears itself to me and then I write it down. Bob Hedley was a wonderful encouragement to me. He gave me a stage to set my work on when I wasn't even in the theatre program. I will always be indebted to him for that.

InterAct: In many interesting ways, IN THE HEART OF AMERICA tries to avoid the particulars of the political discussion about the reasons for either of the wars which spawned its characters. Do you see this an anti-war drama in the traditional sense that it has a specific political intent?

Naomi Wallace: I don't think the play avoids particulars about war, but rather it avoids the expected rhetorical particulars about war. An audience that sees this play already knows the official reasons as to why we went to war against Iraq. American audiences are pretty damn smart. They know why we went to war against the 'commies' in Vietnam. In this play I want to talk about the bits and pieces that don't come up on the plate for discussion, such as the rhetorical links between Vietnam and Iraq, the language we recycled and reconstructed for the new war.

InterAct: You've had a run of BIRDY Off Broadway at the Women's Project, and One Flea Spare is performed often. What's ahead for you?

Naomi Wallace: My most recent play, THINGS OF DRY HOURS will get its premiere at the Pittsburgh Public in April of this year. It's a play about relations between blacks and whites in the Alabama communist part of 1930's. I'm also writing a play about a British War graves garden in Pakistan, for the Royal National Theatre of London.

InterAct: Thanks Naomi.