Starting with a Bang
It's not often that a nascent company chooses a drama as intense as "El Salvador" for its debut, but Legend Theater Company founders Jason Weiss, Derek Michalak and Joe Brocato could not pass on the opportunity. They originally intended to do a showcase, but later felt that such a production would not do justice to this strong ensemble drama. Weiss suggested that, rather than produce a showcase, they should start a company and produce "El Salvador" as their first production. The show would supply the springboard to launch the new company and attract investors to take the production and the players to the next level.

"Hopefully, it will run for more than three weeks with someone interested in extending the run or bringing it off-Broadway," Weiss says.

Having agreed on the idea of a company, they bought the rights to the show for a two-week run, formed the company, registered with the city clerk's office in New York and joined the Circum Arts Foundation to achieve non-profit status. They also emailed dozens of friends, former teachers and other contacts announcing their intentions, to which serendipity replied.

One of Weiss's former acting teachers from the University of Miami wrote back that Rafael Lima was also a professor at Weiss's alma mater and a good friend. The exchange led to Weiss reaching Lima by email and to a bit of good fortune. The playwright answered their questions about the show, hinted that he might come up to see it, and gave them his blessing to extend the run.

"We were originally doing a two-week run; he gave us his permission to do a third week without us needing to extend the rights which would cost us more money," Weiss says.

Direct Impression
Play in hand, Legend's creative team needed to find a director capable of tacklling Lima's story. In August, three months after they began the process, Weiss, Michalak and Brocato approached director Angel David about doing the show. Michalak had introduced them to David. Their first meeting was at the bar where Michalak and Weiss work.

"My initial impression was of a guy I want to work with," Weiss says. "It is very important to like the people you are working with on a personal basis; we struck a quick friendship."

For fledgling producers, choosing a director is nothing like casting an actor. If the director's resume is good, it is a start. Unfortunately, you do not audition them. You do not have them read from a script. And you do not call them in to read with other actors. To a certain extent you have to go by the work they have done and the theatres they have worked in. When you are producing a show that you will be acting in, the stakes are even higher.

"After working for months on the project, we knew that whoever we turned it over to, we needed to have the utmost confidence in," Weiss says. "But unless you've seen their work before, you have to go on your gut reaction."

Brocato, Weiss and Michalak's based their gut reaction on David's reading of the play. In their meeting, they looked at how he interpreted the work, where his interpretation matched up with theirs and where it differed. In the spots where David's take did not track with theirs, they tried to understand why. They liked what they heard and saw. From his personality to his take on the text, it clicked.

"With Angel, we did not have doubts," Weiss says, simply.

As they hammered out the details of the production and their collective vision, the calendar reached September 11, 2001.

The Day After
September 11 altered New York's mental and physical landscape forever. It is futile to try to describe it in a paragraph; we live its legacy every day. A repugnant, irresistible force, the attack reordered people's perspectives and reshaped people's lives. It threatened to do the same with "El Salvador." On September 14, Brocato, Michalak, Weiss and David met for the first time after the terror attack.

"When we got together," David says, "the first question I asked Joe, Derek and Jason was: 'Do you still want to do this play?' Not because I had any reservations about it, but I had to make sure they were ready to go ahead with it."

Before September 11, "El Salvador" had a certain resonance. America's role in the conflict between the El Salvadoran government and the rebels was well documented. It play an indirect role in the deaths of innocence people. The all-too-human anti-heroes of "El Salvador" mirrored this conflict by their licentious, manipulative and callous behavior within the play, which contrasts against the goals and ideals of their profession. Their deeds also raise many moral questions; two stand out: Can you lie in service to a truth? Does being a journalist supercede being a human being?

September 11 has not altered the play's core challenges, but the framework within which the play is presented has transformed dramatically. The country's penchant for self-criticism and self-analysis has evaporated; in its place, a patriotic zeal has materialized. Behind the mantra "United We Stand" is the message 'stick to the program.'

If Legend Productions and Angel David agreed to move forward with "El Salvador," they risked challenging this new national identity. It is possible to misconstrue an anti-American-military message in the play. They had to take this into consideration, as well as the mood and morale of New Yorkers, before they could make a decision.

At their meeting, Weiss voiced this concern, saying: "Forget the money we’ve already spent, we need to think about our responsibility here."

Having cleared the table of their personal concerns as producers, they examined the situation as artists. They felt compelled to move forward and let audiences decide for themselves what they feel about the work.

Several factors contributed to their decision to go ahead with the project. The fact that the show was not going to open for two months gave the city two months to find out what had happened, to heal and to come to terms, or try to come to terms, with the heinous attack.

"We also knew that we had been planning this show since May and that we were not making a commentary on what just happened," Weiss says. He feared that censoring their work because of the events around them would compromise the very essense of what they do. They decided they would give more credit to the people who will see this show.

"We don't think they are going to see this show and think 'they are bashing America.' The show has a very graphic nature, so we know that this show is not going to be everyone's cup of tea."

David concurs: "There may be people in the audience who do not feel it is appropriate at this time, but it speaks to the truth and we want to present that truth and let people feel how they are going to feel."

In defending the decision, Weiss returned to the company's founding mission, which is to be a mirror to society and reflect what they see and leave it up to audiences to decide. They want to explore plays that address social and economic issues prevalent in the world today.

"Regardless of September 11, this play is socially relevant and it does examine the human condition," Weiss says.

Villians in Varying Shades of Grey
There is no protagonist in Rafael Lima's "El Salvador." Each character has serious flaws that Lima shifts in and out of focus. In a way, the men who make up Lima's television news bureau compete for the mantel of anti-hero in the play. Each is given a chance to display his flaws. McCutcheon chooses to manufacture quotes under the misguided William Randolph Hearst dictum, "Never let the facts get in the way of a good story," Fuller chooses his camera over his conscience. Fletcher is more concerned about career advancement and his sexually-transmitted disease than the lives and actions of the people around him. Pinder has accepted the evil around him and has begun to reflect it, making the others self-conscious about their own transgressions. Skee may be the least repulsive character, but he abets Fletcher and seems indifferent to the actions of the rest.

It's easy to summarize these reporters as awful people--they get drunk, solicit sex from prostitutes, contradict themselves, chase bodies and bloodbaths for television footage and fabricate details to get their spot on the evening news--but that only tells half of the story. They are products of the circumstances they live in. Lima makes their faults obvious; he also makes their situation palpable.

"He gives you many sides to seeing the same story," Weiss says.

For instance, at what point do you stop reporting the news and start to affect it?

On the other hand, does doing nothing make the story possible? Can liberally "paraphasing" a quote that does not exist make a difference? Is getting the footage worth more than putting down your camera to save a life?

Weiss finds himself returning often to a magazine issued during the Vietnam War. On the front cover is the photo of a man with his arms tied behind his back and a gun to his head.

"You could see the look in his eye," Weiss says. "The man was tied up with a gun to his head. There was nothing you could do...But the thought runs through your mind, I wonder about the guy who took the picture. How do you hold the camera still? How do you click the shutter?"

They have a job to do which requires them to be remote and objective, but the events that they must record are also affecting them. They can develop a tolerance for it, but eventually something triggers them to lose their balance and this tolerance starts to wane. The play picks up these characters' lives at one of these breaking points.

"This is really revealing how you get that 20-, 25-second piece of video on the news and the toll it takes not only on the people experiencing the war, but also the people who cover them," David says.

The haunting part of "El Salvador" is that "this exact scene happens every single day," Weiss says.

The Actors Prepare
In certain respects the cast's rehearsal process resembles that "Groundhog Day" sentiment. "El Salvador" is a play that operates at fever pitch from the moment it opens, until the curtain falls. It takes an incredible emotional reservoir to sustain the writing for the length of the play.

"The hardest part of a rehearsal practice is you start and stop," Weiss says. "And when you have everything these characters have to go through, especially the scenes with Rosita, it is very draining."

As actors, they also had to see the massacres, body dumps and carnage of conflict with their own eyes, enough to reach the point that they desensitize themselves.

"We had to have the appreciation of that horror, the disgust at what goes on," Weiss says. "These men have been around this, whether it is in El Salvador or Managua, for a long time; eventually they have to get used to what they are seeing.

Joan Didion's book, "Salvador," provided useful research for this development. It is a short book densely packed with disturbing details. Lima cites the book in the preface to his play. Even though the play is based on actual events, Weiss always saw it as a story. Then he read "Salvador" in which many of the incidents and locations that form the backdrop to "El Salvador" are drawn.

"This is not Shakespeare or Mamet or Shanley, men who tell great stories; this is something that actually happens and did happen."

Few images are etched on his mind more indellibly than the pictures they downloaded from the Internet that capture in graphic detail the body dumps mentioned in both "El Salvador" and "Salvador."

"We downloaded pictures of the actual body dumps at El Playon and Puerta Del Diablo," Weiss says. "There are bodies strewn all over the place and in the background you see kids playing and cars parked. It is like lover's lane until night really comes, and then nobody goes there. Everyone knows what happens there, those are execution sites. But in the morning everyone's back there."

"It is interesting what we can get used to," he adds.

After seeing images of ground zero on their television screens, the members of Legend Theater Company decided to ventured down to the site of the September 11 attack.

"We felt the need to ... see it with our very eyes," Weiss says.

They needed to get the images off their television screen and discover the truth for themselves. The pilgrimage echoes their efforts to produce "El Salvador." They are bringing audiences closer to the reality of reporting from the front lines and its effect on those who do it. It is a story that will challenge the perceptions of audience members. It is not without moral questions and real world implications. Questions that Legend hopes the audience will pick them up and decide for themselves.

"We are not trying to prod people, clap our hands and have people wake up," Weiss says. "We just want to put on good theater, and this is good theater."

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