Gary Sinise Recalls Importance of Veteran Stories Ahead of ‘Last Out: Elegy of a Green Beret’
By Movieguide® Staff
As the Gary Sinise Foundation prepares for a two-night special event of the stage play “Last Out” at the Steppenwolf Theater in Chicago for Veterans, the award-winning actor recalled how theater played a major role in the inception of his foundation.
Sinise said that while he worked at Steppenwolf theater as an artistic director he noticed a lack of shows about the Vietnam Veterans experience.
“It was an early job, I was the artistic director at Steppenwolf for a while and I had directed several plays,” he told radio host John Howell in a recent interview. “With Vietnam Veterans on my side of the family and on my wife’s side of the family, I was very moved by talking to them over the years and got kind of obsessed at that time with trying to find some material that would speak to the Vietnam Veteran experience.
“In looking at newspapers from various cities around the country and theater sections, I came across this play called, ‘Tracers’ that had been done by a group of Vietnam Veterans,” he recalled. “They had actually wrote it based on their own experience, and they were performing it in Los Angeles in 1980.”
Well before his role as Lt. Dan the Oscar-winning movie FORREST GUMP, Sinise sought out ways to help veterans and bring awareness to their struggles.
“I flew out to see it. I was very, very moved by it. Went back the next night and saw it again and then begged them to let me do it at Steppenwolf,” he recalled. “They eventually did and in 1983 we started rehearsing it and we opened it in 1984. So it’s nearly 40 years ago that we opened it in Steppenwolf.
“We made it available for veterans at that time to see it for free and every Tuesday night would be veterans’ night,” he added. “Audiences would just be packed with Veterans. The members of the cast were very dedicated, they put their hearts and souls into it. It was a wonderful production and after the show, each night, we would have a post-show discussion.
“I really think that all the veteran’s work that I am doing today and the focus on supporting the men and women who serve our country, the origin of that and the genesis of it goes way back into the early 80s when I got involved with Vietnam veterans through “Tracers” and supporting them locally in Chicago,” Sinise said. “Now it’s a full time mission of the Gary Sinise Foundation.”
“Last Out: Elegy of a Green Beret” was written by former Green Beret Scott Mann. Sinise said that he and Mann connected over their shared interest in storytelling.
“I kind of look at it as the modern day, post 9/11 equivalent to ‘Tracers,’” Sinise said of “Last Out.” “What the Vietnam Veterans who wrote Tracers did all those years ago is being done now based on the stories of our Afghanistan veterans. Scott served in our special forces. He was dealing with very serious issues with his mental wellness, and looking for avenues to try to heal. He found that storytelling, and telling his own story, was a way for him to kind of exercise some of the things that were going on inside him and to heal.
“He created a play based on that called ‘Last Out’ and he put a team of combat veterans together, veterans and military families together, and they started performing around the country around 2018,” he added. “In 2019 my book came out, its called, Grateful American, and Scott told me that he read my book and he read all the stuff about Tracers and he read all the stuff that I talk about in there in terms of what performing those stories on stage did for the Vietnam Veteran back then and he really connected to that. He has told me it gave him great incentive to keep going and that’s how we connected.
“I said Scott, this is something that is right in our wheelhouse at the Gary Sinise Foundations in terms of trying to help our veterans through current-day mental wellness issues,” Sinise said. “I said, ‘let us sponsor the show, and that’s what we are doing.’”
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