Famous Michael

Famous Michael is about a Vietnam vet medic who can't forget the war and the woman who can't forget him.


This book contains the long poem, Famous Michael, originally published by the poetry journal, Abraxas, in 1978, and republished as a chapbook by Samidat Press in 1988; as well as an adaptation, revision and expansion of it into a play.  Famous Michael was staged by Solano Repertory Company in Fairfield, California, in 2008.  Famous Michael won an Arty Award for Best Original Play.  Shannon Kase directed.  The actors, Wallace Ingalls as Michael and Kirsten Lunde as Linda, won Artys for best male actor and best female actor.  


The poem is, at its heart, a dramatic monologue, a genre that inhabits the territory between poetry and theatre. The speaker, Michael, is a Vietnam War vet medic.  Until he left Vietnam, Michael was famous for not getting hurt, but that was never quite true.  The poem follows his progress from graduation, through the war, and to his discharge due to injury.  At the end, he begins training his son for the next war as his father trained him.


The play is an experiment, asking the question, what happens when this poem crosses the border into theatre?  What happens when actors' performances give flesh and blood to the poem's voice, and multi-media underpins  (video, stills, and music) with sounds and images?  The play version starts Michael's story at the moment of President George Bush’s 2003 TV announcement that Coalition Forces have begun invading Iraq.  This triggers a vivid and brutal PTSD flashback.  Michael stands up in his living room and takes off his bathrobe, revealing jungle battle fatigues.  Suddenly it’s 1969 and he's back in the Vietnam War.


The play adds a second character, Linda--the woman who can't forget him--, because, for the author, without her, the play is too heartbreaking, too far down the abyss of terror and despair.  Michael’s Vietnam horror alternates with Linda’s stateside psychedelic discoveries, as she tries to talk to him, fix him, love him.  


At the end of the play, back in the present, a broken-down Michael recalls how his father, a WWII vet, trained Michael for the next war—which turned out to be Vietnam—and how Michael trained his son for the next war—which turned out to be Iraq.  And Linda calls one last time.