 ABOUT THE PLAY The Eyes of Babylon is developed from the Iraq War Journals of former marine, Lance Corporal Jeff Key who deployed to Iraq in March 2003 and was med-evac'd two months later for surgery after a non-combat related accident. While deployed to Iraq, Key kept his sanity by recording his experiences in a small moleskin notebook he kept in the cargo pocket of his cammies. For entertainment, he read the journals to his fellow marines. In the journal there are serious moments and moments seriously funny. When Key returned to the United States and people would ask about the war, he read to them from the journals as he had done in Iraq. The response was always the same, "You should do something with these." Key considered publishing the journals but he was also suffering a deep depression as more and more was revealed about the impetus for the US invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq. Ultimately, as his frustrations became so great, he knew that he had to speak out or self-distruct completely. About this time, he med New York director Yuval Hadadi. It was decided that the journals would become a one-man play for small theatre that Key would perform and Hadadi would direct. A workshop version of the play opened at the Tamarind Theatre in Hollywood, California. It played there for eight months and closed to full houses and rave reviews. Since that time, The Eyes of Babylon has had successful runs in San Francisco, Lexington KY, Birmingham AL, Salt Lake City UT, Dublin Ireland and many other stops along the way. Jeff Key's story, to include the creation and performance of the play is the subject of the Showtime documentary, "Semper Fi: One Marine's Journey" which first aired on that network in June 2007. The play continues to tour the United States and abroad, while Jeff prepares to direct his next play, "Let Us Sing" in which he does not perform. The companion piece to The Eyes of Babylon, the "rest of the story" which tells about what Jeff learned in the peace movement in the same way that the first play told of what he learned at war will be ready for the stage when The Eyes of Babylon closes. The new play is entitled Yankee Doodle Faggot. |