'It happens all the time'

...It would probably contain a national service option...

...ical circumstances warrant an increased active military estabOne cannot be sure that a modified draft system, which lishment, Congress may be convinced to go further...

...money left...

...sional presence of these children...

...Crayons and gym shoes charity" instead of selling them at garage sales...

...12 October 1979: 559...

...Stewart know that great and lunch garbage...

...And so, ones near home...

...Stewart invariably gave birth to change-for-the-better in Ulester...

...Stewart, the Stewarts in Artesia...

...That's why the did try...

...The sisters %b anted Jackie, the oldest boy, to wear a clean, episodes, circled back to his native city...

...There must be of service package is finally enacted...

...Look, lady," he many of these things to stuff-up holes in floors or windows...

...tives, the population mix in the military and National Service What form would National Service take...

...Among Edith's good works, I did are not casual kaffee klatchers, this morning when she stepped vaguely remember the Stewart family...

...When he got paid, he would ride for miles on several ently, for him, enfranchisement was not what we call a viable buses, to find a currency exchange that looked safer than the issue...

...The mother managed always to keep the littlest ones clean, in letters continue in much the same way also...

...Outside, she ting Out is an effective theater piece which has a genuine must face the fact that the only legitimate job she can get is as a concern for the traps of both heredity and environment and a dishwasher-low-paying, exhausting work that will never let wicked way of suggesting the ambiguities of its title...

...Those children who were old enough went to St...

...How far Congress will go depends to voluntary service in the military...

...If he wanted to vote, he could vote in Chicago...

...then Edith would take them back to and Reader...

...In my The best thinking in the past has come up with a three-option opinion, the stage is being set for a reinstatement of the system...

...the place, now rubble, chance, and never left the hospital...

...bill...

...Despite these shortcomings, Getdwindles into a model prisoner and a parolee...

...Claudia's letters washed in the bathtub...

...Certainly the military would pick the gress be convinced that the all-volunteer force is not working, best by initiating stringent physical and mental requirements...

...Pape, is to obviously a functional instructive voice...

...These letters have always twins: Randy and Andy, Larry and Jerry, Doreen and Flora...

...Some curtains...

...Jon Jory, Producing Director of strong doubts about James McLure, at least on the basis of the Actors Theatre and director of the original presentation, these two plays...

...Out of the confusion of voices came them...

...it, might have been news to have two Kentucky lines with her, laughs with her, indicates dramatically that transplants running at once in New York, but the Actors what was best in Arlie-her vitality, her drive-has not been Theatre has so admirable a reputation for its hospitality to new killed, cannot be killed if Arlene is to survive...

...It had, then, made a name for itself before it suddenly graceful...

...What he said was that the Welfare would take away his a call for help...

...Pamela play either a passionate concern about their subjects or an Reed's Arlie is at her best in the long bragging speeches in imaginative flair for theater...

...It would offer those in the in large part on the near-term economic climate in the nation...

...Edith remembers that apparently aimed at one of the customers...

...West Adams Street where they lived...

...12 October 1979: 557 As Edith began to talk, I asked her to start way back, for I she found all the children except the babies sitting on the floor, realized that I had not seen or heard about the Stewarts for a lined up against the wall, each one holding a grocery bag of long time...

...But then, overcome by thirst or other matters, my friend drove the Stewarts to the Greyhound Bus Station he would "drink it all up...

...National Service partici- a change, and there will be...

...season: sunsuits in October, snowsuits in May...

...Theater Critics Association, most of whom knew it only in Susan Kingsley, the original Arlene, is an odd, ungainly typescript, for inclusion as the regional play in The Best Plays actress who can, with a shift of position, of perspective, seem of 1977-1978...

...because "school be starting soon...

...The kitchen dripped perpetually with wet baby clothes okra, a place less threatening to the children...

...begun formally and in the same way: "How you have been, others whose names Edith does not remember...

...the military option could )cave a shorter period of fastly refused to consider seriously except in emergency situa- service, adequate salary and a G.I...

...Regis- Selective Service System...

...It's true that "I must be getting old," Edith apologized, "because I "Toys for Tots" campaigns yielded a once-a-year glut of heard myself blubbering into the phone about putting a little games, but parts were soon lost or broken...

...was in the '60s, when people still gave useful items "to Sweaters for eight-year-old twins...

...When I walked to my kitchen door with my neighbor, and watched she mounted those stairs whose smells she never got used to, her push her way again through the peony hedge...

...The younger Stewarts, that he lived in...

...He found a job as a ironed shirt and a blue tie...

...Except .in a television series, has anyone another neighbor calls it, that refuses to admit the adequacy of been called "Edith" in the past sixty years...

...This scheme includes service in the military as pants might serve for longer periods of time, receive modest national service and would undoubtedly mean that the objec- compensation, be assured vocational and educational opportives of the American military would be modified to include tunities while taking part in the program and a G.I, bill after domestic social service-an objective the military has stead- service...

...Should the Con- could change markedly...

...He lived in a steps toward asserting herself...

...Perhaps both, outside Tupelo, Caledonia and Artesia have not suggested any in different years, for Mrs...

...As I poured the coffee she asked whether I remembered even playing catch in our alley...

...out, waiting for the wrecking crew, Edith, when she went to Why...

...The father, she recalled, was not the greatest...

...Claudia wanted it known that dishwasher in an all-night restaurant on Clark Street, not very Jackie, too, was a twin, but "the other one didn't have much far from the hospital where he was born...

...by early morning, when he'd find instead of the Oak Street Beach, and she has not seen them his way back to Adams and Wood, there was never much since that day...

...through the hedge of peonies that separates our narrow city Years ago we'd see Stewart children in Edith's yard, rolling house-lots, I knew she had something she-really wanted to talk in piles of maple leaves, eating hamburgers on the back steps...

...please talk to the people at the Morgue...

...or that if they lived in one of those tall buildings on Division of the Police Department in Chicago...

...world that 'handles bodies cheap...

...Arlene, Stage docile and uncertain after years of doing what she was told to do, finding and turning to positive use some of the spirit which her earlier self (Arlie) used with such horrifying results...

...At one time there were five children through the years, sent from a number of rural-route addresses under four, or was it four children under three...

...He would work at it four or five days in a social issues were at stake in Mississippi that summer...

...the past...

...both content and form...

...It appears that nineteen-yearworking nuns still left there before that place fell to the wreck- old Jackie Stewart, after a drifting odyssey of unknown ers...

...EnglishCommonweal: 558 teacherly, I wanted her to pull this story together, perhaps with favored prisoner, the pimp who wants to put her back in some truism about ghetto realities and middle class illusions of business again, the mother whose help and whose abuse dehelpfulness...

...If the mili- reactivate the system...

...car might holler at them to get the hell out of here, but none of the householders around the block felt threatened by the occaKAIMARINE BYRNE teaches English at Mundelein College, Chicago...

...SENDING A BOY TO MISSISSIPPI It happens all the time' KATHARINE BYRNE Now Edith is the kind of woman who gets mixed up in the lives of other people, not just guiltily at Christmas, but with a EDITH HAS lived next-door to us for more than thirty certain staying power, from one holiday to the next...

...The President has recently nomitrants have three options: (1) volunteer for the military, (2) nated a Director of Selective Service...

...At first, in cards and what was real was bad enough...

...His job will be to volunteer fdr National Service, or (3) do nothing...

...includes national service, as well as a "do nothing" option In any event, the all-volunteer force is on the ropes, like a will increase middle class participation in the military...

...Apparrow...

...Once Edith's husband got him a janitor's job at a public Stewarts were going home, back to Mississippi: "I don't want school, where he shoveled coal or snow, hauled waste paper my kids killed in Chicago...

...But drugged or drunk, were always falling against their door, during the past year, nothing...

...He belongings: banged-up pans...

...This time, though, It was on a hot day in August, about ten years ago, that he goes to Mississippi by air freight...

...the drank a lot, and in that place where they lived, partially burned clothes they weren't wearing that day...

...What was life like after they reached Mississippi...

...What wasn't real, they imagined, wrote that Jackie "gone away somewhere...

...He knows a man who "handles bodies cheap...

...Some of Jailed for having:shot a taxi driver (both her parents drive the Arlie scenes are little more than exposition, presenting cabs), she is at first the terror of the prison...

...Since Edith and I appropriate social agencies...

...Incentives would be vated...

...The stakes deal will depend on how the salary, fringe benefits and length are too high to depend upon a Rocky 11 miracle...

...West Side to take the big kids to the Oak Street Beach...

...Yet, if you A couple of nights ago Edith accepted a telephone call from talked about "the projects" as an alternative, Mr...

...Simply stated: at age 18 everyone registers...

...With such alternations...

...It is a substantial work and a moving Some of the secondary characters-the mother, the one...

...In the dramatic present, we watch...

...Cutrent legislation proposed by Congressman Paul vote at the present time for a change in the AVF but will allow McCloskey has a fourth option which is really an amendment an increase in preparation...

...They are...

...Presumably tamed biographical information that is unnecessary since Arlie's by a long stay in solitary, she tries to carve her evil self out of speeches and Arlene's confrontations tell us all we need to her body with a fork and, once she is physically well, Arlene know about the character...

...You can tell she's no longer young, just by that acquires "clients" with the kind of "bumbling good will," as name, Edith...

...Finally, there is the shared speech double bill, Lone Star and Pvt...

...But all she said was, "I keep thinking about pends on her not seeing change in her daughter-Arlene elects Jackie's twin, the one his mother said, 'didn't have much to make a tiny space in which she can take the first, tentative chance.' Jackie didn't have much chance either...

...pimp-come close to caricature, a weakness that was emIt is the story of a wild Kentucky girl, the product/victim of phasized when I saw the show by replacement performers who a difficult family-incestuous father, whoring mother, crimi- had still not made the roles their own, and the upstairs nal siblings-who moves from violence to violence in her neighbor, although nicely conceived and well played by Joan attempt to impress her own image on an indifferent world...

...It will be a part of the Department of tary did not meet its needs, then the do nothings would face Defense initially...

...If Marsha her fulfill her dream of regaining her child and creating a Norman's more recent plays, yet to be seen in New York, have protective home so unlike the one in which she grew up...

...This leave all well here and done ok...

...If pool the opportunity to spend a lesser time on active duty in the there is a recession then the all-volunteer force will fill its military-six months-and follow that by 5' years in the ranks...

...playwrights, its program of new American plays, that the When I read the script last year, I was impressed by what it phenomenon is hardly phenomenal...

...Not much...

...And he was killed by a bullet her own backyard, never left home...

...A good fighter in the late rounds trying to go the distance...

...Boxes of old clothes boy on the bus for Mississippi when he was ten (or was it would turn up out of someone's generosity, but also out of twelve) years old...

...They had received a letter from the Homicide children...

...has staged the New York production with a sure sense of the First produced in 1977, Getting Out went on to play Los way the two characters interpenetrate, Arlie's scenes sparking Angeles and to be chosen by a commitee of the American off Arlene's, working alongside without intruding on them...

...A first play shared speech, but all through the play Kingsley conveys-a seldom chalks up such a record, but Marsha Norman is not the line here, a gesture there-a sense of Arlie's vitality in Arlene, ordinary beginning playwright...

...as much force and intelligence as Getting Out, she is an Putting aside new and old temptations to revert to type-the impressive addition to the list of good young American playguard whose desire to help her will keep her forever the wrights...

...about...

...The apparatus for.registration will be actirandom selection into the military...

...This names and ages, modest requests: A blanket...

...There are A NEW AMERICAN PLAYWRIGHT parallel scenes-Arlie's last long speech in solitary, Arlene's hysterical outburst which leads to her monologue on how she MARSHA NORMAN'S Getting Out and James McLure's tried to kill the Arlie in her...

...Would Edith Division Street, a plane might crash into it, killing all of them...

...Jarlath's Since that night a few facts have been established and many School, taught to read and to sit up straight by the few hard- questions remain unanswered...

...Lists of children's baskets or in drawers from a Salvation Army dresser...

...Three years ago, Claudia The Stewarts lived in fear...

...Most talented neophytes dis- dampened down, perhaps, but not extinguished...

...The, military and the administration will sneak up on the skewed to favor participation in either the military or National public and its opposition to compulsion...

...explained to her," it happens all the time...

...and the school, no longer there, where he wore unless Edith came to take them away to a beach, or a park, or the clean shirt and the blue tie...

...A few ion, begins a reminiscence in which, finally, Arlene speaks years ago...

...Congress will not Service...

...We knew that they would be Her essays have appeared in America, The Reporter, The Chicagoan here only for a few hours...

...packages of black-eyed peas...

...Claudia used The man at the morgue was patient...

...Somehow this done fine I do hope...

...What will happen in the near term...

...Edith Claudia, the mother, worked hard all the time, she really likes to think of weather not so hostile, a plot of greens and did...

...Someone passing through in a the Stewart family...

...shouting on their stairway, raving at their children...

...Someone named Claudia was afraid to let anyone play out in front, and that Bailey is in custody...

...Described in these terms, the play sounds like a case study, which in one sense it is...

...somebody's guard dog patrolled the area in back...

...They don't take no bodies Edith, in her old, green Chevrolet station wagon, went to the by bus...

...If geopolitReserve...

...some form of military conscription would be enacted...

...Marsha Norman is an was attempting to do, but there was no way to be certain that undeniable credit to the organization-she is currently the theatrical intricacies on the page could be successfully playwright-in-residence under an NEH grant-but I have realized on stage...

...if not, then Congress may reinstitute a draft...

...Remember, I told you so...

...At the same time, often in the same acting space, we see Arlie, GETTING OUT strutting, tough, unregenerate and, finally, broken...

...Getting Out may not be quite the which she insists on her unbeatability even as her desperation masterpiece that' this long lead suggests, but it scores well on can be felt in the punching delivery, the too insistent laugh...

...Un- Thus the pool of "do nothings" might ileed to be tapped-and doubtedly, the new draft law would be different from that of again the mix of population altered...

...She years...

...In presentation, however, it is much more than that...

...four or five Stewarts, all close to the who had his own reasons, never wanted to get mixed up with phone were crying into it...

...Neighbors or passersby, from Atlanta, Boston, Detroit, "He say he done fine...

...Did Mr...

...Sometimes, however, he legiance, laying claim to this twelve-year-old...

...Because Ulester Stewart had a new fear now: the gang see their mother, might find d no milk for all those children, but recruiters were after his oldest child, Jackie, demanding ala couple quarts of Schli,tz for him...

...Wars, were first pre- in which Arlie, caught at an earlier, happier moment of rebellsented by the Actors Theatre of Louisville...

...On the page, Arlene seemed so muted that I ever got to New York, first in a Phoenix Theatre production, wondered if she could make a believable jump to the final then in the current successful off-Broadway run...