The American Century: Literature since 1945 815lunch at a mess hall, their reconnaissance training, their deployment close to the
target, a last-minute change of plan, and immediate execution of that plan. Pugilist
Specialist is an ensemble piece, written with certain specific actors in mind, members
of the Riot Group based in San Francisco, although it has been performed by others.
And its text, Shaplin has warned, is process rather than product – or, as he puts it,
“just one unfixed, unfinished component of a dialogue between author and ensemble,
performance and audience.” The core conflict that takes place in this fluid theatrical
landscape is between Lieutenants Emma Stein and Travis Freud. Stein is a tough but
clearheaded explosives expert known for her carefully organized bombings of enemy
sites. Freud is a misogynistic sniper who loves to kill. At the close of the play, when
Stein and Freud have finally entered the mansion of the target to plant a bomb as
planned. Freud suddenly receives instructions via radio to kill Stein instead of the
Bearded Lady. The leader of the operation, Colonel Johns, claims that he never
expected the team to get close enough to the target to kill him. Johns cannot let Stein
finish the mission, he tells the fourth member of the team, Lieutenant Harpo. “We
need the target more than we need her.... No more targets, no more history.”
Following the killing of Stein, one last scene consists simply of a taped recording of
the radio conversation between the surviving team members. In that conversation,
Johns tells Freud to leave the corpse of Stein in the mansion and switch off the tape
recorder. The play then ends with the sudden and abrupt cutting off of the tape.
That abrupt ending – a conclusion that does not in any conventional sense
conclude – is characteristic. Pugilist Specialist thrives on indeterminacy. There is
threat here, violence, but there is also confusion. Character, motive, purpose are
illegible, just about impossible to read. “What did this guy actually do?” Stein asks
about Big ’Stach, and receives the answer, “Who cares?” followed by the throwaway
comment, “He’s just your average neighborhood philistine.” Within the play, none of
the marines is ever fully informed about his or her mission. Information is
consistently withheld or fragmentary, while the marines themselves are under
constant surveillance, since a microphone records all their conversations. Similarly,
the audience is left guessing, invited to read character and motive but denied the
evidence required to read them properly. The dialogue is elliptical and allusive,
rendered foggier by a persistent use of clipped military jargon. The names of the
characters seem eponymous, significant (Freud, Stein, Harpo) but, in the end,
appear to signify nothing but themselves; they simply tease us with the possibility,
the deferral of meaning. And those characters, while they try to guess each other’s
motivation and invite the audience to do so too, hide behind military postures or
even draw attention to their own opacity. Stein, for instance, suggests that women in
the military like her can only survive by strenuously protecting their privacy. “Secret
is my armor,” she declares. “Silence is my camouflage.” Even the critical moment in
the play is unreadable. After the killing of Stein, it remains unclear whether the
change of plan was really a spontaneous decision on the part of Colonel Johns or
whether Stein had been the target all along, in retaliation for her leaking sensitive
information to the New York Times after a previous operation. “A strong narrative
arch is essential to any military victory,” Colonel Johns declares at one point.GGray_c05.indd 815ray_c 05 .indd 815 8 8/1/2011 7:31:47 PM/ 1 / 2011 7 : 31 : 47 PM