Lawrence Wright has no need for a second career. The veteran journalist writes for the New Yorker, travels regularly, and devotes years to his nonfiction books which reliably become best-sellers – like his 2013 expose of Scientology, Going Clear, and his 2007 Pulitzer Prize-winning book, The Looming Tower, which investigated the history of Al-Qaeda.
And yet, he stumbled upon playwriting years ago and fell in love. This month, Wright will present his sixth play, Camp David, about the historic Camp David Accords in 1978 that established a lasting peace treaty between Israel and Egypt. (Camp David runs at Arena Stage in Washington DC through May 4th.)
I spoke to the indefatigable writer about historical drama, the Middle East, and the subject of his next book. My article on Lawrence Wright and Camp David is featured in the April issue of American Theatre.
(Camp David stars Richard Thomas as Jimmy Carter, Hallie Foote as Rosalynn Carter, Ron Rifkin as Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin, and Khaled Nabawy as Egyptian president Anwar Sadat. )
In your three previous plays, there has been a journalist onstage, either you playing yourself or an actor playing a fictional journalist. In each of these works, the journalist figure has been instrumental in propelling the narrative. Camp David, on the other hand, features four historical figures and no presence of a journalist. How does this represent a new writing experience for you?
I think that’s a good observation. To some extent my previous work has been a transition into theater. In 1992, I saw Fires in the Mirror at the Public Theater, Anna Deavere Smith’s one-woman show. And what was so striking to me was that she married journalism and theater together, and I didn’t know that could be done. I was electrified by that and I thought there’s something there for me.
After I finished The Looming Tower, I did a one-man show for the New Yorker festival [My Trip to Al-Qaeda]. In that case, I WAS the journalist; I was presenting my experience. And I did the same thing with The Human Scale. And in a way, I did the same thing with Fallaci because there two journalists struggling over the truth. So for me it was a big deal to take that figure out . The journalist had always been my entry into the narrative.
You’ve spoken previously about the idea of the “donkey” – the figure or character that carries the audience into the story. Does Camp David have one?
Not exactly, there’s not an outsider in this. The only person who is to some extent the audience’s representative is Rosalynn. Her job is to make peace among the peacemakers.
When I was reading Rosalynn’s memoir, she mentioned that she kept a diary at Camp David. So when I went to Plains, Georgia, I said, “Mrs. Carter, it would sure help if I could look at it” and I kept pestering Gerald Rafshoon [Carter’s director of communications and current producer of Camp David] to ask President Carter. Then, one day in the mail I got a manila envelope and there was her diary.
There have been many attempts to broker peace between Israel and surrounding Arab nations. What do you think made Camp David effective?
That’s an important question because it’s what the play addresses. Camp David was three religious men trying to solve a problem that religion had caused in the first place.
It’s never been duplicated. It was uniquely successful, and yet it was constantly on the verge of collapse. It’s three leaders leaving their affairs of state behind to solve this problem that’s almost insoluble. Carter was the key to it but he had to become a different person. Within the first few hours of Begin and Sadat meeting, they hated each other so much that Carter had to keep them separated. He had to improvise and create his own plan for peace.
Do you think he came out of it a changed president?
Yeah. It was too late to salvage his presidency though.
What do you think is the collective memory today on Carter’s presidency?
Carter is perceived as a failed president. I think when he left office he was so unpopular that nobody wanted to give him credit for the great thing he did. And of course he was running against one of the most formidable candidates in modern times. He suffered by comparison. But there are things that got him elected in the first place that people have come to forget. He was a redemptive figure in the south. He had made race relations his signature achievement in Georgia, and he came into the presidency with the same idea.
Going back to a point you made about the three men being religious, you wrote in The Looming Tower that religious belief is more influential than political belief in affecting people’s actions.
In the case of Carter, Begin, and Sadat, that was extremely true. Carter and Sadat were both pious men. And Begin was very ethnically oriented toward his Judaism. For Sadat, it was only his religious belief that gave him the courage to break with the Arab world in its rejection of Israel. When Carter got to the White House, making peace in the Middle East was at the top of his political agenda. And in my opinion, it was almost entirely religiously motivated.
It’s impossible to discuss Camp David without looking at the previous wars between Israel and Egypt. In the Six Day War in 1967, Egypt’s military was decimated in the first day, which was an astounding victory for Israel. And once Egypt’s military failed, the other Arab nations involved in the war quickly followed suit.
Another thing about that war – both the Arabs and Jews came to similar conclusions [about God]. In Egypt there was the feeling that “God is not on our side.” And the radical element of Islam was empowered by the defeat. You see far more radical groups than the Muslim Brothers begin to emerge. In Israel, there was a sense of jubilation, that “this is God’s will”. And the rise of the ultra-Orthodox began to rise. So the ’67 war was really a seminal event.
As a Jewish person who has spent time in Israel and lived there for a year, I’ve heard the continual narrative that Israel is simultaneously mighty and mortally susceptible. Maybe it’s the perpetual Jewish narrative. Do you think that Begin went into the peace talks with that dual mindset?
Oh absolutely. As you observed, Israel at times feels invulnerable and also on the brink of existential loss. In Begin’s experience, a third of the Jewish people had been exterminated. He felt that he had in his hands the future of the Jewish people. Israelis felt invulnerable after the ’67 war, but then came ’73 [the Yom Kippur War], and although with American assistance it recovered, Israel’s faith in itself was shaken and there was a stronger motivation to achieve peace.
Why was Palestinian statehood unattainable at Camp David?
The Camp David Accords actually do accommodate the autonomy talks that should have led to some sort of resolution. But they were never completed. And of course there were no Palestinian representatives present at Camp David. The PLO [Palestinian Liberation Organization] was regarded as a terrorist organization, and there was no other authorized representative of the Palestinian people. So Sadat took it on, but he didn’t have the authority to make peace with the Palestinians.
The Accords are two separate frameworks – the treaty between Israel and Egypt, and the autonomy talks for the Palestinians. They were supposed to be linked together, but the second portion was never put into practice. At some point it became clear to Carter that he couldn’t get everything, and he put the Palestinian issue aside. Carter thought he had gotten Begin to agree that there would be no more settlements in the West Bank.
And then Begin promoted new settlements right after.
Almost immediately. And Carter’s never forgiven him for it. And neither did Begin forgive Carter. The last time Carter went to Israel when Begin was still alive, Begin refused to see him.
That’s amazing given the experience they went through together.
And Carter is loathed in Israel as you know. And yet, Ezer Weizman [President of Israel in the 1990s and former commander of the Israeli Air Force] said no American president has given more to Israel than Carter because he gave them peace.
How do you think the treaty is viewed today by Egyptians?
Well, on both sides it’s an unloved treaty, and yet essential. In Egypt, there’s been a cold peace with Israel. It’s not a friendly peace, but it’s endured for 36 years now. Egypt was spending an extraordinary amount of its economy on military and since then it has been allowed to develop its economy in a more normal fashion.
After visiting the Camp David archives and conducting research and interviews, have you incorporated specific quotes into the script?
Oh yeah. I tried as much as possible to find the language that they used. I always ask, what were the words that they used.
Your research process for this play has been incredibly thorough. What I find fascinating is that the parts that are invented come from so much immersion in the subject matter that they have the feeling of realness.
Thank you. I come from the nonfiction world and I’m wedded to the idea that reality is more interesting than fantasy. My challenge as a writer is to take what I know to be real and imagine the rest, to make the connections that put these real bits together. And it’s easier for me to do that when I’m steeped in the material. It’s thrilling to be able to take this canvas and bring something back to life.
There’s a couple lessons from Camp David: one is that there are no perfect partners for peace. They were just as intransigent and oppositional as our leaders are these days and yet peace was accomplished. And another thing was that it didn’t have anything to do with timing. Oftentimes people will say, “the deal’s not ripe, it’s not ready to be achieved”, but that was just as true then.
I heard you’re at work on another book. What is this one about?
It’s about Camp David! When I finished the play, I thought that the book I would have based the play on doesn’t exist and I had already done a considerable amount of research. It’s issues that I’ve been interested in as a chronicler of the Middle East, and everything was on the table at Camp David.
Photo credit: Kenny Braun