The Phantom in the House: Women and War in Outside Paducah: The Wars at Home (Moad, 2016)

This paper analyzes the representation of women in an independent theatre production on the war in Iraq titled Outside Paducah: The Wars at Home (2016). The play is written and performed solo by James Allen Moad II, a former Air Force pilot. It is divided into three acts, each one telling independent stories to reflect the trauma of war and its long-term consequences in war veterans and their family members at home. The three stories are set around the city of Paducah, Kentucky, located between the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers, and take place during the summer of 2007. Each features a male character: a boy whose father returns from Iraq with a brain injury, a father whose son from the Marines committed suicide, and a former soldier on a visit to his hometown after returning from the war zone in Baghdad. By focusing on the role of female civilians in Moad’s play, the paper will illustrate how post-war damage, treatment, and representation are primarily male-related. The equally damaged women’s voices and their perspectives, whether they are civilians or members of the military, remain in the background. Their silence, therefore, fills the space of the not-said and the not-seen.