The guy on stage standing at parade rest, the guy with the buzz cut and the shoulders thrusting out about halfway to the wings looks pretty much like what he is, which is a man on a quest.
Sgt. Joseph Harrell is a former Marine turned military consultant turned actor. Despite his lack of performing credentials, Harrell was so charismatic that he was cast to portray one of the three major characters in "ReEntry," a play about the difficulties faced by military veterans making the transition from the battle front to the home front.
The play by Emily Ackerman and KJ Sanchez is based on interviews with more than 100 servicemen and members of their families. Previews begin Wednesday at Center Stage.
"Working on 'ReEntry' is without a doubt the best thing that ever happened to me," Harrell says. "It has changed me as a human being."
His resume includes stints as a male stripper, a personal trainer and a model for muscle magazines. Add "Marine" and "professional actor," and the resulting career path can seem a tangle. But talk to Harrell for any length of time, and a consistent theme starts to emerge:
Through rigorous discipline and self-control, he hopes to make himself fit for a higher purpose. He is determined to become the best Joseph Harrell he can be, and that starts with a superbly conditioned body. Deeply protective of the people under his charge, he throws himself into helping others improve themselves.
"Everything I do is about trying to add layers to people," he says. "My passion is communication. When I was a drill instructor, I tried to make better Marines. As an actor, I try to give the audience a story they can think about the next day. If I can teach, I have to teach."
Harrell has been involved with "ReEntry" for more than two years, and he says that the experience forced him to recognize and deal with his post-traumatic stress syndrome. As he confronted his psychic wounds, he became better able to control his self-destructive, hair-trigger temper.
"I'd been suffering from PTSD all my life, and I didn't even realize it," Harrell says. "This show has been a wonderful healing process."
"ReEntry" seems to have been therapeutic for a lot of people. For instance, both of the show's creators come from military families.
Ackerman has two brothers who have been deployed in Afghanistan and Iraq; they are portrayed in the show as "Charlie" and "John." Five of Sanchez's brothers are veterans, including two who served in the Vietnam War. "ReEntry" is an attempt to understand their struggles.
Audiences meet a high-ranking military officer who describes a decision made during combat to pass by a mother who stood by the side of the road and begged for help for her dying child. They are introduced to a soldier who feels profoundly uncomfortable when well-meaning civilians thank him for his wartime service. They get to know a soldier who returned to the U.S. and found himself barely able to control his rage during a confrontation with a 13-year-old skateboarder.
Though "ReEntry" has been staged twice previously — in a theater in New Jersey and off-Broadway — the cast and creators consider the Center Stage run to be their first major production. The script was rewritten after the world premiere, and the two previous stagings took place in theaters seating fewer than 100 customers.
"This production is the pinnacle for us," says Sanchez, who also is directing the show. "This is the first time 'ReEntry' will be performed before a large, general-interest audience. Center Stage also is doing a lot of outreach. For instance, they're holding post-show discussions after each performance. 'ReEntry' is getting a frame and a context it never had before."
The audience for the play will soon broaden even more. Ackerman and Sanchez have just received a grant to take "ReEntry" on tour next year to regional theaters throughout the U.S. In addition, they've been performing a one-hour "concert version" on military bases and at veterans hospitals, including at the Marine Corps base in Quantico, Va.
"After each performance, the actors usually come out and chat with the audience," Sanchez says. "I looked over one day and saw a line in front of each performer made up of veterans and their families waiting to tell their own stories."
If Harrell rarely shares his own tale, that's understandable; his childhood was damaging in the extreme. Suffice to say that his parents divorced when he was young, and he was bounced around more than a dozen cities along the East Coast, all of which he can still name. He grew up with a bedrock belief that the world was a dangerous place and that he had only himself to rely on.
He dropped out of high school during his senior year after answering an advertisement seeking an exotic dancer, dazzled by the promise of easy money.
"At that time, male strippers were making $65,000 a year," he says. "My mother and my grandmother both came to see my show. But after a while, I said, 'By God, this is not what I want to be doing when I'm 40.'"
Next, came a job as a personal trainer, but Harrell became frustrated when his clients left a session at the gym and headed directly for the doughnut shop.
He signed up for the Marines in 1999, with the goal of eventually becoming a drill instructor. He thought that if he could control every aspect of the troops' environments, from what they ate to how much they slept, he could bring about a metamorphosis.
"I liked how the Marines makes everyone's individuality disappear," he says. "No one creates greatness by themselves. Everyone has a support network helping and guiding them. Eighteen years of accumulated selfishness is what the Marine Corps takes out of you."
Harrell spent nine years with the Marines and eventually achieved the rank of staff sergeant. But try as he might, he couldn't master his hot-headed behavior, especially when he perceived that his opponent was taking unfair advantage of rank or superior strength to bully one of his troops.
"I had major issues with aggression," he says. "Every three years since I was 14, I got arrested. When I was a kid, I was picked up for throwing rocks at cars. When I got older, it was for getting into fights with people — usually with someone of higher rank."
His final brawl resulted in a request by the Marines that Harrell leave when his current tour of duty expired.
He was devastated. But he picked himself up, obtained his high school equivalency certificate and enrolled at Rutgers University, where he started a veterans club. He also began taking acting courses at night and auditioned for a role in "ReEntry."
Harrell went in knowing that the odds were against him since he hadn't acted on stage since middle school.
"It was clear that Joe had presence and talent, but he didn't have experience or skill," Sanchez says. "But we were looking with someone with military experience to be our consultant, so we hired him for that job."
Harrell threw himself into the task with his typical intensity. He put the cast through a version of boot camp and led them on a 12-mile march while carrying 40-pound packs, in 18-degree weather. In his role as drill instructor, he made one "recruit" cry.
And then, during a workshop production of "ReEntry" in August 2008, Harrell was asked to substitute for an actor who had another commitment — and demonstrated a quantum leap as a performer that stunned the others.
"Joe is a Marine," Sanchez says. "He'd assessed the challenge and prepared an action plan. By the end of that week, we knew he was right for the role. He hit every note. Casting him was a risk, but it was worth it."
When "ReEntry" was performed off-Broadway this year, the trade magazine Backstage singled out Harrell's performance for praise, saying that the actor's "quiet authority and unsentimental voice … holds the show together."
The longer Harrell worked on "ReEntry," the more he thrived. For the first time, he told someone (a former Navy SEAL) about the trauma from his childhood. Then he confided in the cast. Gradually, he gained a strength that has helped him curb his belligerence.
"I actually broke my cycle of aggression," he says. "The last time I was arrested was in 2006."
Even if life in the theater can be as transformative as life in the armed forces, Harrell didn't recognize immediately that actors can be as tough as Marines.
During the final week of rehearsals, Ackerman and Sanchez decided the script was in no shape to be performed. They scrapped the pages they'd written and started from the beginning.
"I didn't really have respect for acting until that moment," Harrell says.
"When they scratched the script, I was about ready to lose my mind. Most Marines wouldn't be able to handle that, because the Corps has all these tried-and-true procedures that keep you from trying anything new.
"But, I looked over at them sitting there, and everyone was happy. This situation was normal for them. They were ready to get back to work. And I thought, 'I want to spend my life around people like that.' "
If you go
"ReEntry" runs Wednesday through Dec. 19 at Center Stage, 700 N. Calvert St. $10-$60. Call 410-332-0033 or go to http://www.centerstage.org for show times.