The story was compiled by
Weiner in Gimme Some Truth:
The John Lennon FBI Files, a
book that caught the eye of New
Jersey native Mark St. Germain
and led to his play, Ears On A
Beatle. The play, which premiered at the Barrington Stage
Company in 2003, will be presented by Alliance Repertory
Company at MONDO in Summit
this April.
Ears On A Beatle covers the
time period from December
1971 to December 1980. It involves two FBI agents assigned
to maintain surveillance on Lennon — Howard Ballantine, a
veteran FBI agent, and Daniel
McClure, a new recruit. The reasoning behind their assignment:
President Nixon’s concern about
John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s opposition to the Vietnam War and
their ability to have the masses
(especially the youth of America)
follow them. The end goal was
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to get Lennon out of the country
before Nixon ran for reelection
in 1972 — coincidentally, the first
election in which 18 year-olds
were allowed to vote.
Mark St. Germain regularly
works within the realm of historical fiction. Subjects in his some
of his recent works have included F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest
Hemingway (Scott and Hem in
the Garden of Allah); Sigmund
Freud (Freud’s Last Session); and
Dr. Ruth Westheimer (Dr. Ruth,
All the Way). The playwright,
who was born in Lyndhurst and
says he spent half of his life in
the Gard en State, spoke to New
Jersey Stage about Ears on A
Beatle and his use of historical
fiction. He said his works usually
start off with a question.
“Who were those guys in the
cab who sped away after Lennon’s shooting? Why did Einstein’s baby girl vanish at two
years old, never to be men-
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