Source: https://www.americantheatre.org/2017/02/22/bringing-it-all-back-home/
Timestamp: 2019-04-25 20:13:10+00:00

Document:
According to an October 2013 white paper by Americans for the Arts (“Arts, Health and Well-Being across the Military Continuum”), one in three veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have experienced post-traumatic stress (PTS), traumatic brain injury (TBI), or a combination of the two. Fourteen percent meet the criteria for depression, although depression itself is not considered a combat-related injury. In 2012, 10 percent of America’s homeless were veterans.
The use of art therapy to combat the issues service members face upon returning home is on the rise, particularly as the traditional medical model has often fallen short. With its strong basis in role-playing, dialogue, and empathy, theatre fills an obvious crossover role as a therapeutic measure. And many artists and organizations are seeking ways beyond the support group to offer points of entry for veterans, active duty military personnel, and their families—and to broaden their own, and their audiences’, understanding of the military experience.
TCG’s Blue Star Theatres initiative, launched in 2012 in partnership with Blue Star Families and with support from the MetLife Foundation, has helped 152 theatres build relationships with military personnel in their communities, through complimentary or discounted tickets, stronger communication, and other programming (the pilot Veterans and Theatre Institute, led by artist-in-residence Maurice Decaul, will eventually define curricula for deeper engagement). Other organizations have built strong frameworks for delivering theatre to military audiences, such as Bryan Doerries and Outside the Wire’s Theater of War, begun in 2008, which takes visceral readings of Sophocles’ Ajax and Philoctetes to military and civilian communities across the U.S., Europe, and Asia in order to foster discussion on the psychological trauma of war, and Marine-turned-actor Adam Driver’s Arts in the Armed Forces, which presents contemporary plays to active duty military in U.S. installations at home and abroad. Veteran-specific performance training—like that offered by Bedlam Theatre’s Stephan Wolfert, himself an Army vet—is yet another creative avenue.
But some theatre artists have defined their role as giving voice to veterans’ own stories, and in doing so have tapped into the incredible power that storytelling holds in helping veterans reconnect with civilian life.
Zakkai convinced Fitzsimmons to come on board anyway, and the two conceptualized what the program would be: a 14-week workshop for veterans of any stripe culminating in an evening of curated storytelling, somewhat akin to the storytelling collective the Moth, titled Everyday Heroes and performed on the Geffen’s mainstage. “I felt like if we were going to do this, we needed to put it on the mainstage and have vets feel this is the best house in this theatre, and this is the best show for you,” said Fitzsimmons.
Finding humor in the story-mining process is also key, she said. “In the military experience, humor is what got you through. My goal is to get them back in their bodies, get that sense of playfulness restored.” The program’s second round concluded this past December, and now the Geffen is looking forward to a third season of the project.
For her part, Fitzsimmons—who also writes for NBC’s Chicago Justice—honed her skills through the Writers Guild Foundation’s Veterans Writing Project. Numerous other veteran-specific writers groups and workshops have provided connections for thea­tre artists looking to collaborate with vets, including those offered by the Writers Guild Initiative (in partnership with Wounded Warrior Project); nonprofits like the Philadelphia-based Warrior Writers and the Washington, D.C.-based Veterans Writing Project; and programs at New York, Columbia, Fordham, and Syracuse Universities.
The cast of the Veterans Writing and Performance Project at the Geffen Playhouse in Los Angeles.
Today’s smaller military force means that service members tend to see multiple deployments, with less time at home in between—which takes a toll on them and their families and further isolates them from civilian life. Our post-draft, all-volunteer, professional military employs less than 1 percent of the population, effectively cementing the understanding gap.
“Essentially, we have a tiny military now, but they’re still undertaking massive wars,” said Jonathan Wei, who founded the Austin-based the Telling Project in 2008. “There’s very little on-the-street understanding or integration into communities about what that means.” Wei founded the Telling Project after reaching the limits of his own knowledge while working with a group of veterans in Portland, Ore., in 2005. “Their patience with the depth of my own ignorance,” as he put it, became the catalyst for the Telling Project, which uses person-to-person contact to deepen understanding of the military experience throughout a community.
This month the Telling Project is in residence at Minneapolis’s Guthrie Theater with She Went to War, stories from female veterans who all served in combat positions, even before the Combat Exclusion Policy was lifted in 2013.
“We’re debunking the myth of that policy,” noted Wei, “and also individualizing that experience.” The piece is intended to tour—with its original actor-veterans—and could even potentially find life as a stand-alone script. “Because it’s more topical, and there’s a certain kind of social, political angle, we want to see if they’re willing to release it, and add to the conversation in a broader way,” said Wei. “With other productions, there’s no question on our part, we shouldn’t let the script go to somebody else.” More traditional Telling Project productions will go up this year in Naples, Fla. (April 29-May 4, in collaboration with the Florida Humanities Council), Arizona, New Jersey, and Virginia.
Fay Simpson launched the Veterans Project within her New York City-based Impact Theatre in 2012 as a way of applying Behavior Change Process, a method of using theatre for social change championed by Mgunga Mwa Mnyenyelwa of Parapanda Theatre Lab in Tanzania. (Simpson, along with co-facilitator Gamal Palmer, took graduate students from Yale Drama and Divinity Schools to Tanzania in 2012 and ’13 to study with Mgunga.) “I thought I would start with veterans, then move to another topic—use the process to go into domestic violence or eating disorders or poverty,” she recalled. “But I can’t seem to move on, because people love this piece. Vets have changed in front of my eyes.” Simpson’s husband was an Israeli veteran who died of alcohol abuse, so she comes to the subject with a keen sense of the struggles faced.
Initially six Impact Theatre actors, trained in Simpson’s Lucid Body technique, interviewed veterans for a verbatim script, Homecoming, which they performed. But Simpson knew she wanted to involve the veterans more in the process itself. She created a company of four actors and three veterans to make Leaving Theatre (a military term for discharge); in it, the non-veteran actors play the military roles, while the veterans play civilians. As part of the Behavior Change Process, the action of the 20-minute piece is frozen at a strategic point and Simpson leads a 40-minute dialogue with the audience.
Similarly, Fitzsimmons noted that “veterans have a great sense of contribution. Why else would you volunteer to do this, to set aside part of your life to be of service to country? When vets come back they’re not sure how to help any more. If they learn that just by telling a story they can bring a tear or moment of reflection—that’s very rewarding.” Some of the veteran participants across all of these projects have gone on to pursue theatre as a vocation.
Writer/performer/director Assaf was developing her Eleven Reflections on September in 2011 at Pangea World Theater’s Alternate Visions in Minneapolis, in collaboration with Iraq Veterans Against the War, when she connected with playwright Linda Parris-Bailey. Parris-Bailey was seeking a director for Speed Killed My Cousin, about an African-American Iraq veteran wrestling with her reintegration as well as a generational conflict with her father and the ghost of his cousin, both veterans of the Vietnam War. The synergy between the two wasn’t merely artistic: Parris-Bailey’s Knoxville, Tenn.-based ensemble, the Carpetbag Theatre, has been rooted in community storytelling since its founding in 1969; Assaf, through Art2Action, combines her work as an artist and presenter with strong community-embedded programming.
Parris-Bailey had worked closely with several Knoxville veterans through Carpetbag’s story circle process while writing her script, but, she noted, “as we developed the piece, we knew our intention went beyond writing and presenting a play.” The two companies received an Alternate ROOTS “Partners in Action” grant to develop a model for veteran storytelling and community exchange (Creative Arts Reintegration, or CAR) that could tour alongside the play. Art2Action’s base in Tampa—home to Central Command, the hub for U.S. security interests throughout the Middle East and Central Asia—was a fertile ground for partnership, with a huge community of both veterans and active military. Assaf and Parris-Bailey connected with Rachel Brink, director of the Psychosocial Recovery and Rehabilitation Center (PRRC) at the Tampa V.A. Hospital, who was excited to bring in professional theatre artists to expand existing arts-therapy programming. Those workshops—which have continued in a weekly format for the past three years—formed the basis for the CAR process.
Art2Action also organizes a monthly open mic night for veterans, begun when Assaf realized some vets might need a more neutral space than the V.A. could provide. “I learned that there are actual restrictions in a V.A. facility, or any military branch—veterans are instructed to not talk about politics,” Assaf marvelled. “It’s hard for them to express how they feel about their military experience. Even if there is no censorship, there’s a fear that they might lose services if they do or say the wrong thing.” The open mics—currently hosted at the coffee house Tre Amici @ the Bunker—are focused on veterans but are open to anyone in the community, as well as guest artists Art2Action brings to Tampa, which opens up further opportunity to bridge cultures. “When someone who is a civilian says to a vet, ‘I related to your piece,’ it’s a big a-ha moment for them,” said Assaf.
As these organizations—and many others—continue to make inroads within the military community and figure out the best formats for bringing veterans into their work, many seek to share experiences with one another.
“We’re trying not to double our efforts, but to see where we can all coordinate and build together,” said Assaf, who played a key role in bringing the fourth National Summit of the National Initiative for Arts & Health in the Military, co-hosted by Americans for the Arts, Art2Action, and the University of South Florida, to Tampa last month. Art2Action curated the concurrent R&R Arts Festival: From Recovery to Regeneration, the first time original work by, for, and about veterans has been performed parallel to the National Summit. “Veterans could be in conversation with researchers, policymakers, and the art works,” described Assaf.
This month, March 10-12, New England Foundation for the Arts, in partnership with ArtsEmerson, HowlRound, and the Foundation for Art and Healing, will host Art in the Service of Understanding: New Perspectives from Artists and the Military Community in Boston. Impetus for the convening came, according to NEFA deputy director Jane Preston, when the foundation saw that it had funded five touring projects over the past five years involving veterans, including Speed Killed My Cousin. With additional proposals coming in, the foundation saw a chance to share the conversation and identify best practices.
“How do you build a common language?” Preston asked, pointing to questions she hopes the event will probe. “It’s almost a translation issue. What have artists and military leaders found useful? What needs to be incorporated into the creation of the work in order to develop that short term, deep relationship with audience? Arts presenters don’t necessarily have a large contingent of military or veteran audience members, but here’s an opportunity to build that audience. How do they build more lasting relationships, even if there isn’t a consistent flow of projects?” HowlRound TV will provide live streaming of the event.

References: Art2
 Art2

Art2
 Art2
 Art2
 Art2