Naomi Wallace’s 1994 political dream play is the second production of Theatre Seven’s 2011-12 season.

By taking stock of five castoff souls, Wallace creates a powerful and poetic evocation of war and its shattering aftermath. Wallace, a MacArthur Genius Grant recipient whose work has been compared to Sam Shepard and Tony Kushner, wrote In the Heart of America in 1994 as a response to America’s involvement in the Gulf War. But the play is also concerned with Vietnam, and invokes the spirits of 1968’s My Lai massacre to tie each conflict together in one unbroken cycle of American aggression. Wallace’s play blends historical accounts of My Lai with the fictional story of a Palestinian-American woman on the hunt for her brother, who has gone missing while serving with US troops in the Gulf War. To find him, she enlists the help of a platoon-mate who, it soon becomes obvious, was more than just a fellow soldier. Many scenes in the play involve multiple, dream-like surrealities where Vietnam and the Gulf War exist simultaneously and characters from each era interact.

In the Heart of America is, at its core, a protest play - the work of a fearless playwright who demands, with poetry and conviction, that we consider the impact of war and its connection to interpersonal violence.

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