David Greer

burning blue by David Greer

Ambassadors Theatre, 1995

burning blue has been a huge and unexpected hit, especially remarkable considering this is author David Greer’s first play. To mark its transfer to The Ambassadors, ROBIN SEAVILL spoke to the playwright about friendship, flying, and the importance of having…

The Write Stuff

RS        Where did the idea for burning blue come from?

DG       I guess it was just a response to grieving, and a response to what was going on in my life. I lost many friends to aircraft accidents and my closest friend was killed flying. That was the genesis of it. I also knew of two different guys who had an ongoing relationship, who were incredibly committed to one another and had to be very very discreet, and I thought to myself what would this be like, how would this unfold if in fact one of these men was killed, and the other wouldn’t really be able to go through any of the process of grieving or of recognising the loss of his significant other?

RS        Is it a function of the military service to try and suppress this kind of close feeling between individuals because it supposedly compromises security and one’s ability to do the job?

DG       Well, that’s part of the old rationale, that it compromises security, unit cohesion, all of that. But there have been several individual studies done on this in the eighties that have shown that there is absolutely no reason why homosexuality has any bearing on one’s ability to uphold security and secrecy requirements, or one’s effectiveness as a naval officer.

RS        The kind of witch hunt the play focuses on… do you find that these are more prevalent in the services now?

DG       From what I gather from friends of mine that are still in the services, I would say that they are. It’s an institution that is really very very resistant to change. It’s all about tradition and maintaining uniformity.

RS        What gives the nature of friendships on board an aircraft carrier their particular intense quality?

DG       I think it’s the nature of the work, the proximity, the interdependence, all those things. It’s a shared work experience that certainly brings out the commonality and similar characteristics in individuals. And there is really a necessity in many ways for that specific individuality to not really take the forefront because you’re all there to do a particular job.

RS        It’s a question of teamwork rather than personalities a lot of the time?

DG       Yes, but the reality of it is, though, people are individuals and they have personalities and I think the US military is finally coming round to that fact. They’re realising, “Hey, we aren’t going to be able to suppress this totally”, and to ask someone to do that is unrealistic and, I think dangerous. And this is right in line with the sexuality issue. Military personnel have to adhere to certain codes of conduct and behaviour based on the situation, but that doesn’t mean that you give up or deny your sexuality. There is an appropriate time and place for everything.

RS        How long were you a navy pilot?

DG       Six and a half years.

RS        Did you see action?

DG       No I did not.

RS        Would you have wanted to?

DG       No, God, no.

RS        Did you always want to fly?

DG       I always had a love of flying but it wasn’t like if I didn’t fly I would die. Of my peers in the service, some wanted to fly more than anything in life and if they didn’t fly you’d have to kill them, put them away. And others were doing it because it was preferable to any one of a number of other jobs within the military. They wanted the camaraderie, the lifestyle of a navy pilot.

RS        You studied landscape architecture and naval science at Oregon Stage [it says here!]. How did you make the sideways move into becoming a navy pilot?

DG       It was a family thing, I’m a third-generation navy pilot.

RS        Did you feel family pressure to do that?

DG       It wasn’t overt, but there was some pressure there. It was a natural segue into adulthood given my military upbringing.

RS        Where did the acting come from, because that’s quite a different departure isn’t it?

DG       Yes it is, but if you grow up as the son of a high-ranking officer I guess you have to do a lot of acting.

RS        Did you act at university at all?

DG       No I didn’t. I moved to New York while I was in the navy, I did a short tour as a public affairs officer, representing the navy to the media, and while I was there I was exposed to the theatre and that whole world and it really turned me on. I thought wow, this is the most exciting thing I’ve experienced. In fact, the parallel between getting up on stage and putting your ass on the line flying in very demanding conditions are very similar for me. It’s that adrenaline rush of really being there in the moment that’s so compelling.

RS        As a playwright do you find the applause at the end of burning blue more of a buzz than the one acting gave you?

DG       I would say, in this particular case, yes. I don’t think I’ve ever felt an emotional response as powerful as I have with this.

RS        The play has yet to be seen in the States but I presume there must be people interested in the play over there?

DG       There are quite a few people interested. I’m hoping that’ll happen in the not-too-distant future. There’s a lot of interest in the play in other countries too which is very encouraging.

RS        How long did it take you to write?

DG       The first draft took three months. And then it was a hell of a lot of crafting from there. Probably everybody who’s ever written has ultimately come to the conclusion that writing is rewriting.

RS        Are you surprised by the success burning blue has had?

DG       I’m incredibly pleased by the response. I have to say that somewhere deep down inside I felt that I was saying something that I thought other people might want to hear. So I felt fairly confident that I would have an audience out there. I didn’t expect it to be this great though. The response has been really overwhelming in a lot of ways, and I think it’s because of the ensemble nature of the play. The characters are real people and there are so many different relationships between them. There are women, there are wives and husbands and friends and lovers, and they all have a very significant place in the story. And whereas one person might not be able to relate to the best friend and his wife, somebody else might be able to relate to the two men or the investigators. It seems like there’s a way in for everyone.

RS        It seems like you’ve written a very timely play.

DG       That’s really just serendipity. I had no idea when I started writing that there would be any of this in the press about lifting the ban on homosexuals serving in the military. As a matter of fact I sequestered myself in my apartment in New York for about three months. It was a self-imposed media blackout so I could just concentrate entirely on what I was writing. And I remember one day coming out and having dinner with a friend and we were talking politics and he said, “You know, one of Bill Clinton’s campaign promises is that he would repeal the ban on homosexuals in the military,” and I said, “You’re kidding me,” I had no idea. So I really didn’t write this as a polemic, that wasn’t my interest, I didn’t want to get on a soapbox, it just so happened to be the milieu that I understood. And the interrogation conducted by the two Naval Investigative Service agents in the play was a way to expose some of the fascist behaviour, the ignorance, and a way to propel the story forward. And that was also something I knew about. I was never interrogated in that fashion, but I know people who were. It was something that shocked me and angered me and at the same time it was a great impetus for me to write.

RS        I believe you’re writing another play. Similar theme or totally different?

DG       Thoroughly different theme.

RS        Having had such a success with your first play, does it place a particular burden on your shoulders to make the next one equally good?

DG       Absolutely. I’ve actually spent quite a bit of time dealing with that, a lot of psychic energy trying to convince myself that I just don’t need to think about that, just go and do the work. So I’m not going to allow myself to be pressured into spitting out something that is not ready to be seen yet. I don’t know when the next play will be done. I’ve actually been working on it for about a year now, but other things have come up and I’ve been working on the screenplay for burning blue, which hopefully we’ll be shooting sometime next year.

RS        Would you like to have acted in burning blue?

DG       I thought about it and actually when I initially started writing it I thought this would be a great vehicle for me. Then I tried to figure out which character I would play because there’s actually, I guess, a part of me in all of the characters, but I very quickly realised I needed to step back so I could maintain my objectivity in the editing process. Perhaps that’ll happen at some time but right now I don’t know how I could ever do anything close to what the actors are doing now in this production. They are really a superb group.

PS

I seem to remember there was some excitement around the office about this one. The Ambassadors, a proper West End theatre, was not a venue we routinely provided programmes for but there was some kind of situation – a late cancellation, or a surprise transfer, not sure which – which suddenly required us to put together a programme at very short notice.

It had premiered at the King’s Head and after a West End transfer proceeded to win two Olivier Awards. It was later seen in Los Angeles, San Francisco and New York, and it was filmed in 2010 under the direction of the author himself. Not that we were to know any of this at the time.

The play is set aboard a fictional US aircraft carrier so someone got hold of a generic cutaway diagram of just such a vessel with the various sections annotated for the convenience of any Russian spies who might have been in the audience. There was a similar schematic of the FA-18 Hornet, an attack aircraft likely to be deployed against any future aggressor, detailed right down to its maximum speed, take-off weight and armament. Presumably only lack of space prevented us from providing a comprehensive map of all the secret locations in the Mojave Desert where the highest concentrations of said fighter could be located and bombed to buggery.

But my favourite part was the reproduction of a poignant poem written by a young World War Two fighter pilot from which the drama drew its title. I reproduce that page here with humility and respect.