DeKALB | There were many realities in the daily life of a Vietnam soldier that would stand in the face of the NIU Standard of Acceptable Behavior. Activities like killing, drug-use, prostitution, napalm bombing and drunken-brawling are all strictly prohibited on NIU grounds.

So, how did the NIU Theater Department’s production of “Tracers” expose the harrowing combat service and relationships of eight American soldiers during the Vietnam War?

The heroin snorted and shot up on stage? That was milk powder. The dozen cans of beer chugged and sprayed around the netted and dirt-covered Steven’s Building Players Theater? They were Schwepps Ginger Ale cans in fake beer sheaths. The endless supply of marijuana joints smoked entirely through the second act and half of the first? Oregano.

What about the six machine guns toted around stage by six un-trained soldiers?

“Those were real,” said Beth Schrader, junior theater studies major and stage manager of “Tracers.” “We had them deactivated, though.”

The more than 350 f-words in the play? Those were real, too, with more added after every rehearsal and performance as the actors got more into character. One can’t fake something like five solid minutes of push-ups or gallons of spit being flung out of a yelling drill instructor either.

It must have been the very present mixture of sweat, smoke, dirt and testosterone in the air that made the atmosphere of “Tracers” so effective.

“At our first performance was a large veteran audience, and there was not a dry eye in the theater,” said Robert Gardner, sophomore theater major, who portrays soldier Baby San.

The play followed six main soldiers from boot camp to civilian life or death.

The cast was young. It seemed unnatural to see such young men dealing with the life or death struggles of a soldier. Of course, it was and is true that men so young are being sent off to war.

There is one scene in which the soldiers are performing clean-up after a battle and have to mime the dragging of their departed fellow’s bodies into a pile in the center stage. The scene gets so intense and the connection between reality and illusion is so frail that, during one performance, an actor willed himself to throw up on stage, the bodies seemed so real.

“I have four friends in Iraq, and during the body carrying scene, I have to imagine that they are my friends that are being carried. I can see them, their faces; it becomes so real,” said Gardner.

It is no surprise that the group of eight male actors could work themselves into such a confounded mess of nerves in their portrayals of infantry men. For a week, they simulated boot camp with a true lieutenant colonel, they have been regulars at the Campus Recreation Center and they have been together day and night.

They watched documentaries of Vietnam and listened to the music of the time, and the closer they came to understanding the realities of life in Vietnam, the more they realized how impossible it was to understand and digest the experience

Dr. Patricia Ridge, the show’s director, explained in a press release that the goal of “Tracers” is to explain the effects of war on people, and is not specific to the Vietnam war.

“We look at the Iraq War and [see] we haven’t learned anything,” Ridge says, “except we need to always support the troops.”

In Vietnam, the line between reality and illusion became so blurred that it scarred a generation. “Tracers” traces that line to a T.