Out of sight, out of mind. That was the hope behind the Clinton administration's 1993 "don't ask, don't tell" policy, that half-hearted attempt to finesse homophobia in the armed forces by getting everybody to Shut up about it, already. Gays and lesbians were, and still are, officially banned from serving, but everyone was to -- nudge, nudge, wink, wink -- not bring sexual orientation into the conversation.

Unfortunately, out of sight, out of mind was also the tendency that made concern for anti-homosexual behavior in the military fade from public consciousness a couple of years later, when a former soap opera actor named Marc Wolf made a connection with a character he'd become familiar with. In a play, Wolf was portraying Peter Bergson, a Jew who in World War II campaigned to make people aware of the treatment of Jews in Europe, although others tried to convince him he was stirring up anti-Semitism.

So in 1996, while certainly not comparing the treatment of gays to the Holocaust, Wolf began a three-year trek around the country, mainly to military bases, conducting some 400 hours of interviews with about 150 men and women. He spoke to the sociologist who formulated the "don't ask, don't tell" policy, to a young marine taken to a gay bar by his recruiter, to an effeminate soldier whose sense of humor cheered up his buddies in Vietnam, who called him Mary Alice. Besides them, Wolf also plays two middle-aged lesbians chatting. He plays the mother of a soldier who was stomped to death, who could identify her son's body only by his tattoos.

The result was Another American: Asking & Telling, a one-person play that Trinity Repertory Company has invited Wolf to perform through February 10 in the downstairs theater. It was directed by Joe Mantello, who helmed both the Broadway production and the film adaptation of Love! Valour! Compassion! In 24 short scenes, Wolf becomes 18 characters, using excerpts from his interviews verbatim, in the non-narrative documentary style of Anna Deavere Smith and Moises Kaufman.

Another American ran off-Broadway for two months at the New Group Theatre, until early last year, and earned Obie awards for performance and direction as well as an Outer Critics Circle nomination for best solo performance. Kudos from the press included the New York Times noting that Wolf was "a brilliant sketch artist," and the Village Voice dubbed the show "a smart, provocative, and chilling event." Even USA Today was impressed, listing it as one of the top 10 plays of 1999. The play will be published soon, and Wolf hopes to use the excised interviews in a book, Studs Terkel-style.

Wolf, 39, majored in both theater and political science at Williams College. Based in New York City, he has performed off-off Broadway as well as on TV's The Guiding Light. Now he's on the road interviewing again, this time gathering reactions to September 11. "There may be a play, there may not. We'll see," he said from Tennessee, where he conducted by phone the interview excerpted below.

Q: It sounds as though a big concern of yours is that, as opposed to don't tell, telling a lot can help solve the problem eventually.

A: When you silence people, you deprive them of their stories, which I thought were incredible stories when I was hearing them. But besides stereotyping gay people, the policy also stereotypes the military as a bunch of bigots, you know, who are behind the times, that whole spiel. And I just think that that might have been equally damaging. So I tried to find people in the military who were not feeling that gay people should go to hell, who did not feel that gay people didn't have a place in the world and could be good neighbors, but who were people that felt [the policy] was best for the military and best for the country.

Q: We might think by the subject of the performance that it's preaching to the choir, but you're aiming at a larger message of acceptance.

A: There is no choir. I think that's a misconception as well. The community of gays and lesbians in the military has been very isolated not only from the military, because they have to keep quiet, but also from the gay political movement came out of civil rights, which was tied into the peace movement. And so the gay political movement has had, I would say, a decidedly anti-militarist bent. So this is an issue that the gay political movement has had trouble getting behind historically. Only very recently has it become something that the gay political movement has embraced.

See, I thought that the whole issue was an opportunity to explore how we stereotype both communities, the gay community and the military community. Back in 1993 it became this argument about, you know, we don't want guys in dresses showering with our boys. I think the whole issue is more interesting than that. Its challenges mean more than that. And that's sort of why I went around the country to talk to people.

Q: This is a conversation that can end military careers. To what extent did your potential subjects resist participating?

A: A lot. Many I talked to said no. There were many who were approached by other people in the military who said no. There were many I talked to who would not allow me to tape-record their voices, so I knew that I wouldn't use them in the play but that I might learn something from them; that becomes a part of the play.

Q: Did you ever regret not having some narration, to make the sequences and transitions clearer?

A: No. I tried that and I didn't like it because I felt that any moment that it was me talking to the audience was a moment less when someone I met could have been talking, when the audience could have been listening to something somebody told me. I wanted to take a step behind the people that I met, and I felt that narrating put me between the audience and the characters.

Q: Many of your characters must be very meaningful to you, but is there any person you interviewed who haunts you in a way that maybe you hadn't anticipated?

A: You know, that's funny. The one that haunts me the most, as you say that, is one person who saw what I was going to use from the interview and even though he would've been anonymous he was too scared that he would be identified. He's African-American, was thrown out of the military in the '60s. He was so -- I don't want to say damaged, but his recovery from that took so long. And the military used to really follow people once you were kicked out to make sure you weren't going to get a good job. There are stories and stories about that, especially in the '50s and '60s, of them following up with employers, letting them know why that person was kicked out of the military. It's a beautiful story he has, but I can't use it because he's scared he'll be identified.

Issue Date: January 4 - 10, 2002