Beau Willimon was there the night of the Dean Scream.
Think back to 2004. Front-running Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean had come in third behind John Kerry and John Edwards in the Iowa caucuses. In a cracking voice exacerbated by the flu, Dean used his concession speech to fire up his supporters at a West Des Moines ballroom.
With his sleeves rolled up and using a microphone that filtered out crowd noise, he predicted victory in the string of upcoming primaries: “And then we’re going to Washington, D.C., to take back the White House! Yeah!”
The “yeah” became a singular moment that transcended politics to find a place in pop culture. Dean was held up to ridicule as the clip was played repeatedly on news and talk shows. DJs used it in mash-ups and remixes.
Willimon, a playwright, spent six months in Iowa and helped set up that ballroom appearance. He synthesized many of his experiences there in his play “Farragut North,” about a fictional presidential primary campaign. It opens this week at the Unicorn Theatre.
Willimon said the noisy crowd in the ballroom noticed nothing strange about Dean’s delivery, mainly because they could hardly hear him.
“If it hadn’t been the scream it would have been something else,” Willimon said in a recent telephone interview. “The press is always looking for that moment that perfectly encapsulates who someone is. In reality most candidates do things like that a dozen times a day, but they don’t make news because they don’t jibe with people’s ideas about who they are.”
By any measure, Willimon said, the Dean Scream had little to do with Dean’s failing fortunes in the race for the White House.
“His campaign went from being essentially a non-contender to skyrocketing to front-runner status,” Willimon said. “It just got too big too fast with a fair amount of disorganization. And while Dean’s message was pretty sound and related to a lot of people, there’s a lot of day-to-day logistical stuff in running a campaign that’s just as important as the message. Dean was out-organized on the ground in Iowa. Kerry’s people were really, really good.”
His play based on those months in Iowa was first produced off-Broadway last year and premiered on the West Coast in June. The Unicorn production is directed by John Rensenhouse.
But what, you may ask, was a New York playwright in his 20s doing in Iowa in the first place? Simply explained, his friend Jay Carson had worked for numerous political figures and would often ask Willimon to come work with him.
“Jay Carson is one of my best friends in the world,” Willimon said. “We went to college together at Columbia, and Jay has had a pretty incredible meteoric career in politics. He was the press secretary for Tom Daschle. He worked for Bill Bradley. And he went on to become the national spokesman for Howard Dean at the ripe old age of 26.”
And so Willimon went to Iowa.
“A lot of stuff in ‘Farragut North’ is drawn from that experience but also drawn from several of the campaigns I’ve worked on,” he said. “It’s a fictional campaign and no one character is really based on anyone in real life, but they are definitely amalgamations of people I’ve come across.”
The play centers on a political whiz kid, the press secretary for a presidential candidate, who gets an education in cutthroat politics. Among the characters are an older campaign manager, a young intern, a second campaign manager for a rival candidate and two reporters in a narrative that unfolds in bars, restaurants, hotel rooms and campaign offices.
To reach Robert Trussell, theater critic, call 816-234-4765 or send e-mail to rtrussell@kcstar.com.
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