Going After Cacciato

The 2005 world premiere production poster of Going After Cacciato at Texas State University that is signed by Tim O'Brien, the author of the 1979 novel of the same title.

Going After Cacciato is an adaptation of Tim O’Brien’s 1979 National Book Award-winning Vietnam War novel of the same title. When New York’s Epic Repertory Theatre wanted to turn the book into a play, O’Brien recommended his friend Romulus Linney, whom he met at the Sewanee Writers’ Conference.  Going After Cacciato premiered at Texas State University in the fall of 2005 and won the American College Theater Festival’s David Mark Cohen National Playwriting Award that year.  The play has not yet received its professional premiere.  As the recent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq continued, Linney withdrew the play from production.

The play follows the experiences of Paul Berlin and his fellow U.S. soldiers, who must pursue an AWOL soldier named Cacciato, who has deserted the Army intending to walk to France to get away from the war.