[MUSIC - Luscious Jackson: Citysong]

Alison Stewart: This is All Of It. I'm Alison Stewart, live from the WNYC Studios in Soho. Thank you for sharing part of your day with us. I'm really grateful that you are here. On today's show, we'll talk about the New York City's tap water and why it might be tasting differently right now. We'll also speak with Sabia McCoy-Torres, the author of the new book Vibes Up: Reggae and Afro-Caribbean Migration from Costa Rica to Brooklyn. And we'll talk about how QAnon has torn families apart from Jesselyn Cook, the author of the book The Quiet Damage. That's the plan--

[music]

Alison Stewart: Hey, wait a minute. That's the plan, so let's get this started with the new play, Fatherland.

[music]

Alison Stewart: Fatherland is verbatim theater, as in the true words, statements, and transcripts surrounding a father, a son, and January 6th. The play was conceived of by Stephen Sachs, the artistic director of the Fountain Theater in LA. He turned the words of Guy Reffitt and his son Jackson into a dynamic exploration of what happens when families that love each other are torn apart. Guy Reffitt was one of the people who charged the Capitol on January 6th, and he's caught on tape doing so. His personality and political changes had begun earlier. His son Jackson witnessed his evolution, and couldn't stand it any longer. Jackson made a call to the FBI, recorded his conversations with his father, and then testified against him. Here's a scene from the play Fatherland. In it, actor Patrick Keleher plays the son, and Ron Bottitta playing the father.

[playing a clip from Fatherland]

Son: They're tracking down everyone who was there. You know that, right? You know that.

Father: Yeppers--

Son: Videos and cell phones--

Father: Government's closing in.

Son: Well, isn't that, you know, bad?

Father: I don't care.

Son: How can you not care?

Father: Because I didn't break any laws. Tell me the law I broke.

Son: You smashed through police barricades and you overtook the United States Capitol.

Father: But I didn't break any laws.

Son: You carried your weapon on the federal grounds.

Father: Okay.

Son: Okay?

Father: Okay, I carried my weapon onto federal grounds that we own, that American citizens own.

Son: Paying taxes gives you no right.

Father: Who said I pay taxes?

Son: What?

Father: I had every constitutional right to carry a weapon and to take over Congress. Just because a law is written does not mean it's the right law. We went in there, they scurried away like rats and hid. That is how you do it.

Alison Stewart: Guy Reffitt is now in prison. Fatherland was described in The New York Times as, "A finely calibrated, surprisingly effective new work of verbatim theater at the New York City Center Stage 2." Joining us now is Stephen Sachs, who conceived and directed the show. Stephen, nice to meet you.

Stephen Sachs: It's a pleasure to be here.

Alison Stewart: Actor Patrick Keleher, who plays the conflicted son. Hi, Patrick.

Patrick Keleher: Hey, thanks so much.

Alison Stewart: And Jackson Reffitt, the young man who the play is based on. Hi, Jackson.

Jackson Reffitt: Hi, Alison. How're you doing?

Alison Stewart: I'm doing great. Steve, when did this idea start for you?

Stephen Sachs: It began actually in November, last November. I'm the artistic director of the Fountain Theater in Los Angeles, and we have a long history of creating new work that dramatizes political and social issues. I was really looking to create a piece that would dramatize what was at stake in this election, in this critical election right now, and I read all kinds of scripts and didn't find what I was looking for. Then when I remembered this story of this young man who turned in his father to the FBI because of his dad's role in the January 6th attack, I googled that and went online. When I discovered that the court transcripts were all available because of public domain, it was a federal case, I read the testimony. And when I read Jackson's testimony in federal court, him being questioned and cross-examined by the two attorneys, it was absolutely riveting, and I knew that I found my play.

Alison Stewart: Patrick, what kind of research did you do to understand your character, the son?

Patrick Keleher: I did a lot of Google rabbit hole research. I went through a lot of YouTube videos of Jackson's CNN interviews, I did some research on a lot of the January 6th, just in general, the Capitol storming and the events leading up to it, but I'd say majority of my research was the fun little-- I'd go into Jackson's Instagram, I found his Spotify account, I would listen to his Spotify music before I'd go on stage. Just tiny little things like that.

Alison Stewart: Jackson, what did you think when you heard that this play was being produced, Fatherland?

Jackson Reffitt: As someone who isn't really used to theater, I had no idea what to expect. This is all new ground for me. I had never been involved in the community at all, so I was worried. This is a new, groundbreaking way to tell the story, rather than just reporting on it. This is theater. This is something for people to watch, something to consume and learn from. I was insanely curious, given the topic and the way I lived it, that I was, I was terrified, because [crosstalk]--

Alison Stewart: How long did it take you-- Oh, please continue. I'm sorry.

Jackson Reffitt: It was scary. My sister sent it to me, Stephen had reached out to me, and I was too scared to respond back because I felt worried. But the more I learned about it, the more intrigued I got. Verbatim-- there's no better way to tell a play like this.

Alison Stewart: Stephen, what themes emerged to you as you looked at the transcripts and the court documents and the interviews?

Stephen Sachs: Well, to me, what made it so powerful was that-- Yes, it's about these large political issues, and it's about Trumpism and cultism and the right wing militia movement. But to me, what really spoke to me was that it is a father and son story. It's a deeply personal story about this specific father and this son, so to me, it's a way to sort of open a window into a large political social event which we all experienced and saw happen live on television and think we all know. It reveals a very personal story about this man and his son in a way that I think is just profoundly moving and powerful. It's almost Shakespearean, I think. It's almost like a Greek tragedy to me. It's immensely theatrical and powerful.

Alison Stewart: Patrick, your character, the son, what's going on with him when we meet him? How does he feel about his dad?

Patrick Keleher: Well, when we meet the son, we start off right in the first moments of his testimony, and there's a whole lot going through his head. He sees his dad for the first time in over a year. He now has to publicly speak to everybody about everything that has gone down, and really, there's just a whole lot of fear and unknown that is about to happen.

Alison Stewart: Jackson, in the play and in your life, it starts by telling us a little more about your dad, that he had a good job, that he traveled the world. What was life like before he took a turn?

Jackson Reffitt: Amazing. I mean, we were insanely privileged. My dad got a good job, we were able to travel overseas, live over there, and exposed me to all these amazing opportunities and things in life out in the world that a lot of people don't get to experience at my age. For specifically me and my dad, our relationship was pretty amazing. I mean, the oil industry itself is very hard, and the play goes over this wonderfully, which was one of the things I was very worried about is, what caused this, and the 2016 oil crisis. Topics like that, while showing my love for my father and his love for me really lays the foundation for our actions and motives during what happened in my life and what plays out in the play, and it is translated very well, and it's hard to look back on just because everything is so different now.

Alison Stewart: Patrick, how soon does the son realize things are going strange with his father?

Patrick Keleher: He starts to realize right after they get brought back from Penang and his dad loses his job working as an oil worker, and Trump gets elected. Trump really starts bringing all these people together, and the son realizes that my dad is getting brainwashed, and it's not who he used to be. It's not the family that we used to have, now it's completely different. That's when things start to take a turn.

Alison Stewart: My guests are the cast members of Fatherland. That's Patrick Keleher, he's the son, Stephen Sachs is the director, and Jackson Reffitt, who's the real-life person in this case. When we're talking about the two characters, Stephen, you call the characters father and son, not Guy and Jackson. Why not give them those names?

Stephen Sachs: Because to me-- Yes, this is a very specific story about this specific family and this father and the son, but to me, it's also a larger story, that it could be any father, any son. That this is an American story, and that this story is being repeated in households across the country with all the people who participated in January 6th. This kind of story unfolded and continues to unfold. So for me, the story is very specific to the Reffitt family, but it's also universal. It's any family anywhere in this country.

Alison Stewart: Steve, I want to ask you about the set. It's very simple. There's a background though, and it sort of reminds me of like the Statue of Liberty sort of cut up a little bit. What did you want from your set? What did you want from your sound direction?

Stephen Sachs: Well, I made a decision right away early on that I did not want to use any video, because we've all seen all the video of the attack on the Capitol, they're so seared into our minds. I thought it would be even more powerful to use sound instead, and allow the audience to create those images in their own minds. There's a whole section in the play, which is really quite remarkable, where Ron Bottitta, who plays the father, tells the story of going to the Capitol. And as he tells the story to his son and to the audience, we go there with him. He walks to the stage, and suddenly the sound comes in, and you hear the crowd, and you hear the chanting, and then you hear the pepper spray and the bullets flying. It's all done with sound and lights and an actor, and everything else is created in the mind of the audience, which makes it even more visceral.

So we're not just watching it being performed in front of us, we are actually sharing in the experience of creating the event with him because we see it in our minds. It's very powerful, and to me, I wanted to take a non-literal stylistic approach with the play. The whole play is performed with three chairs and two tables, and that's it, and four actors. But with those three chairs and two tables and four actors, we go everywhere. We cross time and space to tell this story. It's immensely theatrical. It's almost cinematic.

Alison Stewart: Patrick, your character seems to get increasingly anxious about being around his dad. What is he anxious about?

Patrick Keleher: He's anxious about what is about to happen. He hears all these different tiny little plans that are going to add up to one big dramatic change. Everything's going to be different, it's going to be the end to it all, but he doesn't know exactly what that's going to be. He doesn't get a clue, and he doesn't believe him at first, and then he does believe him. All these things added up on top of each other cause I him to be extremely anxious for a whole period before he even storms the Capitol, it is just one thing building up on top of the other.

Alison Stewart: Jackson, in the play, your father joined several groups like the Three Percenters. He did so in real life as well. What did those groups mean to your father?

Jackson Reffitt: A sense of community. More than anything, given his paranoia and his own anxieties during that time, the one thing you really need in that is community. Whenever you feel so isolated from so many other communities you've been left out of, you feel lost. Post-2016, when he lost his job, he was caring for a family, he didn't really have that. He had no help from anyone. He felt he wore that responsibility, and he found a helping hand whenever it came to community, and of course, not in a good way. In a very, very, very unhealthy way. It just drug him down into this radicalized movement that he felt as if this is what he needs to do to fix his family, himself, and the people around him. He really believed that the civil war was coming up, and you know, in times of war, it has been seen that people gain a sense of self in those moments, and I believe my father felt the same in that moment. And given the state of this country and the place that he was in, we would all be looking for community. You just got to find the right one for you, and definitely not a militia.

Alison Stewart: Patrick, you said in interviews that you feel sorry for the father in this play. Why is that?

Patrick Keleher: Well, I feel sorry because things change. Everybody in their own mind thinks what they're doing is right, it just depends on which point of view you take, and I think this story highlights-- I think it has a great moral of two people believing in what they're doing, and in the grand scheme of things, one just happens to be a little bit worse. I felt bad because I put that in the perspective of my own father, and God, it would be a terrible thing to completely lose contact with my dad because of something that he has done that is not right and-- Yes.

Alison Stewart: We're talking about the play Fatherland. It follows the real life story of Jackson Reffitt whose father was one of the people who attacked the Capitol on January 6th. Jackson joins me now, along with actor Patrick Keleher who plays him, and director Stephen Sachs. Stephen, the play goes into-- for an amount of time, it goes into how many times Jackson appeared on TV, how many interviews he's done, about the GoFunMe that is set up for him. Why was this important information to include in the play?

Stephen Sachs: Well, one, because it's true. And again, everything is verbatim, and it was important to me that this play presents the truth on stage. I think it also gives an opportunity to show the audience a side to the character of the son that adds dimension to his character, and it gave the prosecuting attorney fuel to try to go after him as if to attack the son's motives. What was his real motive for turning his father in? Does he just want to get famous? Does he just want to get money? The wonderful thing about the play and the actual event is that the audience is able to make up their own minds. In my conception of this play, the audience is the jury. We just present the case, and the audience is left to make up their own minds.

Alison Stewart: Patrick, you play this moment on the stand when the defense attorney is going after you, a little embarrassed, or feeling like you have to explain yourself. What was going through the son's mind as you play him?

Patrick Keleher: Well, the whole beginning of the show, we get to see the son side of things, and we get to see why it has been so difficult. And for the first time, when the son is being questioned from the other side, there's a whole lot more evidence that is brought forth. It was tough having Jackson in the audience actually, because it would be-- the way that I play it is embarrassing. It is tough to hear about these things where there's not a whole lot of justification in the son's eyes. It's hard to have people watching him and judging him in that moment right there and then with all these eyes around him, let alone the countless messages that come in on social media and all the other people across the country. We have two completely different views, and there you are right in the center of it being attacked. That feels like a very pivotal moment because it shows a completely different side of things.

Stephen Sachs: Yes. The defense attorney's only strategy is to try to tear down the credibility of the witness. So he's trying to attack the son's credibility and trying to expose some ulterior motive, and it's a difficult and powerful section of the play.

Alison Stewart: Jackson, did people think what you did, calling your father into the FBI, did people think you did it for money?

Jackson Reffitt: Oh, yes, and it's horrifying because it is so gross. You know, I have a brain, I could not imagine the amount of support I would get from that. I would have no way and the insight for that. And arguably, I still feel bad about receiving that much support in the aftermath, just because of the reaction from my family and the people around me, and people online who think I just did it and the lawyers yelling at me-- I feel bad, but I love the amount of support I have gotten. The people that have helped me out in this time when I was living in a hotel for two months, eating Little Caesars in the aftermath of January 6th and everything, it was incredibly hard. I ate nothing but the worst ramen I could find, and warming it up in this microwave that would just shoot out sparks every now and again. It was the most terrifying thing ever, but the people that supported me and reached out to me and helped me and supported me were just amazing. And as guilt-ridden as I am for everything that has happened, I can't express my love enough and express how hard it was to handle.

Alison Stewart: Why are you guilt-ridden?

Jackson Reffitt: I mean, I had my part in all of this, and my mother calls it blood money, and you could make an argument for that too. It's hard to be a part of it, I guess, in such a weird way. I did turn my dad in. I did, and that is the cross I have to bear for the rest of my life. I will always feel guilty for that, and I will always feel guilty for the aftermath. No matter what anyone says, or how it plays out, or if it would have been different, I would have been insanely guilt-ridden, but I would not have changed a thing, and I'm going to continue to love my family and the people around me regardless.

Alison Stewart: The play is called Fatherland. It's at New York City Center until November 23rd. My guests have been Stephen Sachs, Patrick Keleher, and Jackson Reffitt. Gentlemen, thank you so much for taking time today.

Jackson Reffitt: Thank you. You're so awesome.

Stephen Sachs: Thank you. Thanks for having us.