Doerries hua socrates . He was a general in the army and a citizen. He was of a warrior class and the most highly militarized democracy of its time. Over a 100 year period spent eight years and more. He wrote plays that describe experiences that really only those who have been to war or care for those who plan to work it possibly understand so the idea behind what ive been doing over the last seven years sub or by presenting these aging great war stories to audiences who lived those experiences stories of sacrifice and the trail and loss and guilt and shame. The idea is that people and they see themselves were plugged them in ancient narrative open up and realize they are not the only ones. These experiences are as old as time itself. He has a message for contemporary audiences, very urgent message. If you have experienced any of these things you are not alone. Host you talk about the theater of war and not the book necessarily. Guest is a project i started in 2008 in family present dramatic readings by wellknown actors ancient greek tragedies to tempering audiences the last six years i have been touring military installations all over the world bringing these ancient greek warplanes to large audiences and engaging these audiences and open discussion discussions about suicide and the impact of war on families discussions about the timeless experience of war and most importantly the discussions about the visible wounds of war. We have come up with this acronym ptsd but the greeks have the way of describing it. There are description i would conjecture is far more poetic far more human than our narrow clinical definition of what that experiences. Host where did you get the eye via 2 greek tragedy to military personnel . Gets one of the first person to come up with that idea. Jonathan shea and his book the tea leaves of vietnam and forced the idea that storytelling in the western world was born from the need to hear until the soldiers story. Their story is that warriors told each other from generation to generation to pass them experiences. No difference with the athenian tragedy. Im the first one thats crazy enough to put greek plays in many cases they have never heard of great tragedies and you could see there was disappointment but 10 or 15 minutes into the pop or mens all the blackberries and i found one away. People leaned forward in their seats and they did with the military calls staring at this stage with a remarkable level of attention. They locked onto the target which was the play. When we got to the end of the performances the marines jumped to their feet and offered this incredible standing ovation and someone who had never been in contact with the military maybe this is just a respectful audience. Then we got to the discussion and i asked the audience what resonated about these ancient stories that we performed in one of the first people who stood up as a Military Spouse and she said hello my name is marcel and im the proud mother of a marine and the wife of the navy s. E. A. L. S and my husband went away four times toward and each time like ajax came back dragging a physical body into our house. She gave permission to the other spouses in the audience to use the play at the park point of departure were for sharing a harrowing detail of her own struggles. We shared a discussion in the discussion lasted for hours and had to be cut off near midnight. Everyone from chaplains, nuns generals generals wives and sergeant majors got up and took on the core question what does it mean to be a leader . What does it mean to be human and struggle with these invisible womans . What our obligation to each other and that was the first theater of war performance. We celebrated our 300th performance of that one project which i chronicled in the book. We have 14 other projects that use this methodology of taking ancient texts putting in front of audiences who have lived these experiences and opening up powerful discussions. The book talks about our work in prisons where we perform and supermax prisons not for the inmates but for the guards. Most strikingly we did it in Guantanamo Bay cuba in the camps were fourstar general made it mandatory for every guard offduty to see it and respond and also talked about her work with endoflife care. We were doing medical but also public squares across the country during performances of a play by sophocles in which hercules begs his son to be as doctor and he is burned alive while he is struggling to make his final wishes known after being poisoned by his wife. He said he might doctor and performing for communities that have lived with endoflife issues octogenarians who come up with their own lawn chairs to talk about definite community in and the book is about that as well. What is it about the greek tragedies or the greek stories that relate to today . They ask a core questions about what it means to be human but im not sure the plays mean anything. I think they are technologies designed to do something very specific and like an external hard drive plugged into the right audience when he taken ancient greek play designed for specific audience and plug it back in the plane knows what to do. The story knows what to do in the audience knows what to do as well. I feel like these were stories born out of the need of the democracy to communal eyes the story weather was war or you leave the accounts a plague wiped out one third of the gideon population. There is no one in the audience who would have known the conflicts of the caregivers the intensity and the grieving things that make to us seem like extreme histrionic emotion may have been kitchen sink realism. People say that wasnt poetry. That was an act of my wife in the kitchen. For a general audience who may not have had these experiences you either come to our performances and be in the room and hear people bear witness to these experiences and what these plays have to say to us or read the book or the translation that will be coming out through vintage called all that youve seen here is god which is a last line to read the book and engaging with not just the content of the plays but what these audiences across the country in these settings have been saying. I have been learning from them about what agent great tragedies mean. Host Bryan Doerries how you been approaching military and have they been hesitant . Guest i hadnt talked to people and military. My parents are psychologists and professors. I grew up in an academic setting and i didnt know how to go about it but when i got this idea in my head i started knocking on doors and some of them were closed in my face and some of them are slammed into like it or youre out how to talk and have a listen and how to approach people with a sense of nonjudgment so they dont feel theres a lyrical agenda behind it but its about healing. I spent a year and a half trying to figure this out and almost gave up but in january of 2008 i was sitting in my apartment in new york reading the New York Times and there was a feature article about the wave of suicides and the violence coming back from iraq and afghanistan. There was a report that looked at it in totality and in that article there was a section which a Navy Psychiatrist bill nash william p. Nash said i began all of my talks about combat stress are the marine corps with the story about sophocles ajax. I reached bill and he said i get what you are trying to do. How about 400 marines in san diego and thats where we got our start. The crazy part was and this is beyond my wildest imagination within three months of that four months of that performance im sitting in d. C. With a general thing to me i think we should be doing greek tragedy and football stadiums for 30 or 40,000 soldiers at a time. Thats a scale of the issues we are up against. Im happy to explain to this general that while the greek tragedy was performed for 17,000 citizen soldiers at a time that is not in intimate computation and out of those conversations the tour was born in a multimillion dollar contract the largest and most expansive collaboration and dod history and we embarked on what we have been doing for the last six years. We have been performing on military bases all over the world and lessons of that experience are chronicled in many ways. Host when you are sitting in your new york apartment guest greek tragedy is not a particularly lucrative business. Before that it was an abdication like iran and National Nonprofit organization in new york that offered scholarships to young teenagers called the alliance for Young Artists and writers and its called the scholastic writing and arts awards. Its been around since 1923. And the fact that we still do it and they are still supporting us for what we have done for the period we have done it but how the military for better and for worse drives social change. What is the response from the Artistic Community . More than 200 actors have participated on and on. It is very rare in our profession to be certain we are doing things for our craft but to change a life that i make a difference so these actors was to have had experience to do it are committed. Of course, there are people on the left with the artistic beauty who question the motives that those with the attitude is decriminalize everyone but we need those people then trying to make it so they are heard because there is Nothing Better veterans have heard for all the folks to be heard is a more powerful way man shouting at each other. So you want to have open and honest dialogue give a democracy. So start with the portrayal of human suffering first. Of the cruelties that characterized the public discourse. And i think better is what theater is supposed to do and little by little it does. The theatre of for. War. It will be published is september. Booktv on cspan2