More About Healing Theater

 

Both Bryan Doerries and KJ Sanchez use theatre to confront the toughest human challenges, from battlefield trauma to prison

[This post is a follow-up on “Theater: A Healing Art” (3 September 2023).  Theater as a healing art is an idea that was put into my head by Leonardo Shapiro (1946-97), an experimental theater director I knew in the 1980s and ’90s, and about whom I’ve blogged often on Rick On Theater.]

“NOT ALONE”
by Rob Weinert-Kendt

[The article below, the transcript of a conversation between KJ Sanchez and Bryan Doerries moderated by Rob Weinert-Kendt, was published in American Theatre’s October 2015 issue (volume 32, number 8) under the heading “Conversations.”  It was posted as “Bryan Doerries and KJ Sanchez, Mediators and Resensitizers” and slugged “Interviews” on the AT website on 23 September 2015. 

[(The text below is taken from the online version of the article which has more of the conversation than the printed text.  The final passages of the digital edition were badly edited; I’ve taken the liberty of cleaning them up for reposting on Rick On Theater.)

[Bryan Doerries and his Theater of War, which is all about healing through theater, are the subject of “Theater of War” (22, 25, and 28 June, and 1 July 2024).]

The creators of ‘Theater of War’ and ‘ReEntry’ compare notes on adapting and creating cathartic experiences for servicemembers and other hard-hit communities.

Neither has served in the military, but both Bryan Doerries [b. ca. 1977; pronounced DOOR-eez] and KJ Sanchez [b. ca. 1967] have felt called to serve in other ways: Doerries with his company Outside the Wire, which since 2008 has toured his stripped-down translations of Greek tragedies to military bases around the world, including at Guantanamo Bay (AT, July/August ’11), and Sanchez with ReEntry, a docutheatre piece she created with Emily Ackerman [playwright and actress based in New York City] based on interviews with veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (in the same AT issue) [premiered at Two River Theater Company, Red Bank, New Jersey, 24 January-15 February 2009]. Both have since branched out to do similar work in other contexts: Doerries with healthcare workers and prison guards, and Sanchez with pieces about equity in the arts and most recently the legacy of brain injuries in professional football (X’s and O’s: A Football Love Story at Berkeley Rep [premiere: 16 January-1 March 2015], coming soon to Baltimore’s Center Stage [13 November-18 December 2015]; AT, March ’15).

[Outside the Wire is “a social-impact company,” say the official statements of its mission, “that uses theater and a variety of other media to address pressing public health and social issues, such as combat-related psychological injury, end-of-life care, prison reform, domestic violence, political violence, recovery from natural and man-made disasters, substance abuse, and addiction.”  It was started in 2009 by Doerries, its co-founder (with Phyllis Kaufman, a lawyer and the company’s producer).

[Outside the Wire is the umbrella organization for several related projects, including the Theater of War, whose origins reach back to 2005, though it, too, was formed in 2009. ToW is “a project that presents readings of ancient Greek plays to service members, veterans, and their families to help them initiate conversations about the visible and invisible wounds of war.” (The dates of formation for both Outside the Wire and Theater of War are given variously in different sources.)]

Doerries’s new book about his work, The Theater of War: What Ancient Greek Tragedies Can Teach Us Today, will be published on Sept. 22 by Knopf [2015; for a review by James Shapiro, see Theater of War, Part 1], along with a volume of his translations of Ajax, Women of Trachis, Philoctetes, and Prometheus Bound, titled All That You’ve Seen Here Is God [Vintage, 2015]. A star-studded 10-city fall tour to mark the book launch begins Sept. 27 [2015] at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.

Some months ago, Sanchez and Doerries, who are friends and colleagues, met for drinks at Soho’s [New York City] Ear Inn to talk shop about military culture, the machinery of tragedy, and why talkbacks are an obscenity.

[For some thoughts on “talkbacks” from a playwright’s and a dramaturg/writing teacher’s perspective, see “Thoughts on Playwriting” by Kirk Woodward (31 January 2021).]

KJ Sanchez: What I love about your book is that it covers all your work, not just your work with the military, but how all of these plays can serve as palliative, as healing, as a reflecting pool and a conduit to important, life-changing conversations we don’t seem to be able to have until we have that play that can ignite them. What the book can do is become a lighthouse for a lot of people who want to do this kind of work.

Bryan Doerries: I hope so. I certainly hope so.

Sanchez: I have to make a confession. When I first saw your presentation on an Army base, I got really emotional—and that was before the actors even started. I got emotional with your introduction. You get up there and say that in your marrow you are committed to this conversation that is about to happen. It’s clear how personally dangerous it is, how professionally dangerous it is, and you lay it all out on the line. The way that you introduced Ajax [442 or 441 BCE; by Sophocles (497/496-406/405 BCE)]—the way you set the stage for who Ajax was and what his friend Achilles meant to him, and the loss of dignity and humanity that Ajax suffered when Achilles’s shield is given to Odysseus instead—this was all in your introduction, and I was already just completely engaged.

And I was so happy to see that you put all that personal investment in the book, too. You had talked to me a little bit about losing your girlfriend Laura. Obviously, losing someone you love is a key moment in anyone’s life, but I didn’t realize how that really triggered what you would do for the rest of your life.

[Laura Rothenberg and Doerries met at the University of Virginia in 2002. She had cystic fibrosis from birth and died on 20 March 2003 at age 22 when her body rejected her transplanted lungs. In his grief, Doerries said, he turned to the Greek tragedies he’d read in college because he could relate to the great suffering the characters underwent. That experience, he professed, led him to the Theater of War.]

Doerries: You know, you make one decision in your life: I’m going to care for a person; I’m going to put it all on the line and see where this leads. I’m going to face death, I’m going to face suffering. And it just continues to open world upon world upon world. I owe all my work to that experience, and it keeps unfolding in all these ways that I could never expect. Laura died on March 20, 2003, in the East Village in our apartment, and a year ago, on March 20 [2014], I found myself sitting in an office at [Memorial] Sloan Kettering [Cancer Center; cancer treatment and research institution in Manhattan] being asked whether we’d bring Philoctetes [409 BCE by Sophocles] to this cancer hospital. We did five or six free performances, engaging these oncologists in open discussions about death and dying and being in the presence of suffering, using this ancient play as a catalyst. At the end of that, the head of surgery’s wife comes up to me and says, “We’d like to ask you to be our commencement speaker this year for the surgical oncologists.” I always thought I would get a high school graduation, or you know, the Rotary Club, but to be given the opportunity to speak to 75 of the top surgeons at the top training institution in the world for oncology was a huge opportunity.

So standing in front of these doctors, I hit them really hard—I talked a lot about Philoctetes and about Hippocratic medicine, the limits of medicine in the ancient world and how there was wisdom in conceiving of a medicine with limits. I had no idea if it would land. And then, at this black-tie event at Cipriani, one by one these doctors, these chairs and chiefs of the program, came up and said, “That really touched me.”

[Doerries was probably speaking of Cipriani 42nd Street, an elegant event space known for its high-end Italian cuisine. It is directly across East 42nd Street from Grand Central Terminal. (There are—or were in 2015—a number of Cipriani eateries of different types in Manhattan.)]

What I’ve learned over the last six years or seven years is that sometimes it really takes an outsider to change the culture of an institution, whether that institution is the theatre or a hospital or the military. The only way to stand in front of an audience of a thousand Marines who are thinking about the ways they could disembowel you, who are resentful at the fact that you’re there telling them about Greek tragedy and they’ve been “volun-told” to see it—the only way to stand there with any confidence in my opinion is to revel in being the outsider. You don’t have to be hyper-masculine; you don’t have to be accepted or even be liked by them. You just have to deliver this thing to them.

Sanchez: And you have to be willing to listen. That is very, very clear with what you do. Even if what you ask them is, “So tell me how we got it wrong,” then that opens the door.

Doerries: That’s the best!

Sanchez: That’s the best question, right?

Doerries: I know it’s working when two things happen. One is when the lowest-ranking member of the community for which we’re performing, the food service worker in the prison, the private in the military, the palliative care hospice nurse in the hospital setting, stands up and speaks the truth of his or her experience in front of the highest-ranking members. The second way I know it’s working is when people talk about how much they hate the experience, and they can openly do it in their own words. It becomes all the more validating, after the person who said, “This is the fucking most pretentious thing I’ve ever experienced,” for someone to say, “This is the most life-changing thing I’ve ever experienced.” I find myself grinning from ear to ear when people stand up and say, “This is bullshit.” Because we’ve created a place where that can be said. I mean, where else can that be said in these regimented hierarchical environments, you know? I mean, it’s okay for us to get up and say it at the Public Theater, but to say it where your job is on the line?

Sanchez: Wouldn’t that be fantastic if we could have more of that immediate feedback loop in the American theatre at large? Because the only way we have feedback is audiences can give thumbs up, thumbs down, reviewers can talk about what they liked or whether the writing was successful. This isn’t about, “Do you think we’re good playwrights?” It’s: I’m going to do my very best to share, to tell you this story in an artistic, human way. Then I want to hear whatever you have to offer, all of you.

Doerries: When we move the needle and audiences are buzzing because they’ve been touched in some meaningful way—not necessarily explicitly about a social issue, but touched as human beings—we have an opportunity to do something with that energy. Yet 99 percent of the time, with great speed and efficiency, we suck the life out of the possibility in that audience. We do that by having a dramaturg come out and give a lecture; we do that by having people who share our political beliefs come out and congratulate us for having those beliefs; we do that by, worst of all—with all due respect—having the artists come out and talk about process. That’s the most soul-deadening thing you can do after an uplifting experience in the theatre. Instead, this model, which I know you subscribe to—

Sanchez: Well, we outright stole it from your design when we did ReEntry at Center Stage, then at Actors Theatre of Louisville [Humana Festival of New American Plays; 15 November-17 December 2011]. We did exactly what you do: Immediately after the performance, panelists came up. With ReEntry it was a veteran, a spouse, and either a chaplain or a mental health worker. And their job was to give their first-blush personal response to the play. It can be, “This play made me angry,” “This play was exactly my story,” “This play made me question how I’m going to talk to my husband,” or, “What you didn’t get in the play was this.” And then a town hall discussion. It’s completely different than having the actors come out, and then the audience has to be nice and say, “What was it like to be that character?”

Doerries: It’s to the point where the word “talkback” has become an obscenity to me. Not because the word isn’t descriptive of what we should be doing—we should be talking back. It’s an obscenity because we have turned it into a manifestation of our most banal, most unimaginative impulses in the theatre. Theatre is a psychotropic experience; it changes us biochemically. It puts us in a different state of consciousness. And once we enter that state of consciousness, something can happen.

Sanchez: We need to coin a new phrase—“talk-across.”

Doerries: Yeah!

Sanchez: Instead of a talkback, you know?

Doerries: I mean, right now it’s really a “talk down.” It’s about, how many different ways can we condescend to the intelligence of this audience? Until we’ve deadened the possibility we’ve created. The model that we use and that you have innovated on in your own way—I do think it speaks to the ancient model from which these ancient texts derived and evolved, which is that a city would empty all of its courts, its places of work, its places of worship, and send one third of its population to a theatre, and 17,000 people would sit according to tribe and rank and watch plays that were explicitly speaking in some way to fundamental human experiences. Not as sheer entertainment and not as therapy per se, but as a religious experience—a rite, something that is sacred.

Sanchez: I get a little squirrely when I hear the word religious, but my version of that is about bearing witness.

Doerries: If I had one word to define this work, it’s permission. How many different ways can we give you permission—you, the audience—to speak the unspeakable? To acknowledge the thing that you buried deep and denied? To face death? To collectively acknowledge our shared humanity, and also, most importantly with the tragedies we perform, to acknowledge the limitations of human compassion? The note I give actors before they go onstage is: “Make them wish they’d never come.” The reason I say that is because if we push an audience to a point where they wish they weren’t there, and in some way they’ve been trapped—whether they’re “volun-told” or it’s socially unacceptable to walk out, or it’s a place without an aisle—that then we can create this moment where we can actually interrogate why it was so difficult to be in the room. I used to think it was all about empathy, but for me it’s much more about shared discomfort.  

[For an example of a situation like the one Doerries describes above, see my discussion of Richard Schechner’s The Prometheus Project in December 1985 in “Appropriation in the Theater” (8 May 2015).].

Sanchez: Right. You know, we use the phrase “compassion fatigue” a lot, when we’re not really all that tired of being compassionate. But you are actually dealing with communities, with doctors and hospice workers who are facing death every day, dealing with a military on their 8th, 9th, 10th deployment—you are dealing with people hitting the wall.

Doerries: Absolutely.

Sanchez: And you’re saying to the actors: Throw the wall back at them and then somehow you bust through together.

Doerries: Yeah. Push it past them, past what people in the room can handle. I mean, most of our audiences are red state audiences; they don’t share a lot necessarily in common with the actors or with me in terms of our values, our political perspectives. But if we share nothing, at least we share that we were uncomfortable.

Sanchez: That is such a great place to start. That’s the base of human experience.

Doerries: So if you want to have a conversation about abortion, if you want to have a conversation about war, if you want to have a conversation about traumatic brain injury, start with a portrayal of human suffering first, push the audience past its ability to hear it, witness it—and then have the conversation. I guarantee you it won’t be a shouting match of people trying to savage each other with ideology, because we have moved the audience from one cognitive space to another, and it creates the opening. I see it every place we go, from San Francisco and Cambridge and D.C. to the most rigidly conservative audiences in the middle of the country.

Sanchez: Ajax was your first project; you used that play as a way of talking about battle fatigue, post-traumatic stress disorder or post-traumatic stress—depending on who you talk to, because some folks don’t like the term “disorder”—the spousal experience, and obviously suicide. Talk us through a couple of the other pieces that you cover.

Doerries: Concurrent with the development of Theater of War, I also developed this project, presenting readings of Prometheus in supermax prisons. At first I thought we were going to perform it for the inmates.

Sanchez: But then something even more interesting happened.

Doerries: After trying to get into Rikers Island and getting very close but not making it, I met a social worker there who said, “Listen, I have a cousin who is the director for corrections in the state of Missouri, and he might just be crazy enough to allow you to come in with Prometheus Bound [ca. 430 BCE; by Aeschylus (525/524-456 BCE)].”

Sanchez: It’s always about meeting the one that’s crazy enough. Or desperate enough. I once had a Marine Corps retired general say to me, “We’re desperate now—we’ll try anything.” That’s why he was all for bringing theatre into the military.

Doerries: Yeah, God bless the military. They’re not like foundations that need metrics before they try something. They have a problem the scale of which is so large, and for better or worse, they have such a large portion of our gross domestic product and our tax dollars, and you and I came in at this moment where they were trying everything: They were trying sand rock gardens, they were trying equestrian therapy, they were trying dolphins. Greek tragedy or documentary-style theatre [what Sanchez does; see “Feud for Thought” and “Real Talk About Real Talk”] actually seems relatively middle of the road when you think about all the things they were trying. They were throwing them up against a wall and seeing what stuck.

Sanchez: So back to: You met this woman who had a cousin who might have been crazy enough to try this.

Doerries: Yeah, so I call the cousin and he immediately returns my call. His name is George Lombardi, he’s the director of corrections in the state of Missouri. And he says, “Listen, I really like your idea. We have some programs already for prisoners, but what I think maybe would be more valuable is if you came in and did the performance for corrections officers and other people working in the prisons. No one ever does anything for them, we have very little psychological services for them, and they do time eight hours a day and live in these hellish environments, and, you know, maybe something could happen.” The more I thought about it, I thought, well, there’s not closer analogue to the military, where I knew the project was really working, than the sort of paramilitary apparatus of those who work in prisons. They have rank, they have file, they report their surveillance, there’s punishment. To a certain extent, there’s no difference between a barracks and a hospital and a prison. They’re all systems of rigid hierarchy, of discipline and punishment. And Prometheus is about discipline and punishment! It’s about living within this hierarchical structure.

Sanchez: I was very struck with how many guards identified with Prometheus, and see themselves as part of the prison industrial complex in a way that really surprised me.

Doerries: Theatre gives us the opportunity to step back from the roles we’re all playing, to acknowledge the archetypes and look at them more objectively. Everyone who works inside a prison is aware that a very thin barrier separates them from the people they have power over—that only grace separates them in many ways. Many who work in prisons come from the same socioeconomic background, the same neighborhoods, the same classrooms, the same gangs, as the people who are in the prison themselves. So that came out immediately in the discussion of Prometheus Bound after the first performance we did at a supermax prison for the guards: “I’m Prometheus; I’m the one who can be punished for showing compassion to the people that I’m guarding,” or, “I’m the one that if I get a DUI will get a mandatory sentence of five years or more, while you, because you can afford a much better lawyer, Bryan, will get off.”

You know, all of these communities that we go into are communities that practice a kind of emotional detachment at the center of their work, whether it’s surgeons or soldiers or guards or corrections officers. And theatre has the capacity to create a safe space for them to let down the barriers—to allow the Trojan horse of Greek tragedy in and to feel something, and to do it in a public, and even in a performative way.

One of the things I’ve also learned from this work—and this is the center of your work in every way—is that we need mediation. Theatre is mediation. Like, if I allowed myself to feel the things it would be appropriate to feel from the walk from here to the subway in relation to people that I saw on the street, I would be destroyed. So I practice this clinical detachment as well. I need to be wrested from it, for it be wrenched away from me, and the shock of being in the presence of a believable portrayal of human suffering, with an amazing actor delivering it, can do that.

Sanchez: I understand why some doctors and others become desensitized; it’s a survival mechanism.

Doerries: Certainly. It’s not adaptive to be crying when bullets are flying at you, or when you’re in an ER and you’re having to cut open someone’s chest. But there has to be a sanctioned place to feel those things, and the theatre was that sanctioned place. This is not some fanciful fabrication. It was the place where everyone stopped working, they came together, and they purposely put themselves in front of an experience that would elicit these feelings. In a century in which 80 years of that century was spent fighting war—in the latter half of a century in which a third of the Athenian population had died, if we believe Thucydides—there is no one in the Athenian audience who wouldn’t have known the screams of these characters. There was no one in the audience who wouldn’t have understood that first- or secondhand. So for the last six years, the experiment for me has been: What do we do when we take these ancient stories, which I think are a technology designed for very specific audiences that had lived these experiences—

Sanchez: The original apps, is that what you’re saying?

Doerries: Yeah, I think of them more like external hard drives. When you plug them into an audience for which they were designed, the plays know what to do and the audience knows what to do in return. Like when you transplant a kidney, and before you finish suturing it into the new body, the urethra is pumping urine. There’s something about these plays that are living, breathing, organic technology for delivering a very specific experience.

But this is where your work comes in; there are so many people who are suffering and need an intervention of this nature for which there is no classic text and something needs to be devised.

Sanchez: Right, American Records’ mission is to make work that chronicles our time, and work that serves as a bridge between people. So my job is to listen to a particular community, to a particular story, and then what I do is I frame it in a palatable way. I’m a huge fan of documentary films, but documentary theatre does something very different, similar to what you do, which is that it allows us to bear witness together. So I start with a subject, something that I find burning and interesting. This is going to not make any sense, perhaps, but I pick subjects I don’t understand yet what I feel about. That’s been my guiding principle for the last 10 years: that what I think and feel about a situation has nothing to do with what I’m trying to do. In fact, I’ve turned down stories and projects—

Doerries: Where you have a lot of skin in the game?

[My recent post “Documentary and Investigative Theater” (10 September 2025) is an excerpt from KJ Sanchez’s book The Radical Act of Listening: Making Documentary and Investigative Theatre (Routledge, 2024). (The selection was published as “Feud for Thought: How I Made a Play Out of a Family Drama” on the American Theatre webpage on 20 March 2025.) The book explores the field of documentary and investigative theater and offers a guide for making interview-based plays.]

Sanchez: Yeah. I’ve been asked to do something about immigration, and it’s like, no, I know how I feel about that. Then it becomes agitprop theatre.

Doerries: That’s a really important distinction. Because I think theatre that wears its politics on its sleeve alienates the very audience one would hope to engage. It’s not about the opening of meaning, or discovery, it’s about the closing of meaning and discovery.

Sanchez: I took some heat from my colleagues with ReEntry. I had a handful of people angry at me because I didn’t make an antiwar play. They thought that Emily and I made a pro-military play because I didn’t end the play with “war is bad.” I ended it with, “You know what? They’re still going back, and they couldn’t give a shit what the war is about.”

But all of these stories are incredibly emotional; the stakes are unbelievably high. For the last 9 years I’ve been promising myself a nervous breakdown. I keep saying that when I’m interviewing somebody, my job is not to let them know how I feel about anything. I’m on board for wherever they’re going to take me. So I don’t cry; I set aside all of that. Someday I’m going to go away, find a shaman, get into a sweat lodge, and let it all out. And I’m sure this happens everywhere you present: There’s a line of people who want to tell you their story, right? I find people who don’t feel comfortable talking in front of the group, they pull you aside.

Doerries: Yeah, definitely. It goes on for hours.

Sanchez: Where do you put that?

Doerries: It just gives me energy. It doesn’t take away. What I see night after night in the audiences when we perform is a palpable sense of relief.

The first question I ask all audiences is: Why do you think Sophocles wrote these plays and staged them for his community? What was he trying to say—what was his objective? Of course, the subtext of that is, How did this make you feel? And “how does this make you feel” is a question I wouldn’t want to be asked myself. So I say, “Why did Sophocles write this play?” I’m making it sound like a quasi-academic question. At one of our first performances, at an artillery base in Germany, this junior-enlisted soldier immediately raises his hand and says, “I think Sophocles wrote Ajax to boost morale.” And I say, “What’s morale-boosting about watching a great warrior lose his best friend, come unglued, attempt to kill his commanding officers, and ultimately, against the pleading of his wife and family, take his own life?” Before I could finish the question, the soldier shoots back, “Because it’s the truth.”

Sanchez: One of the best compliments I ever got was a lance corporal who walked up to me and said, “First of all, ma’am, I would like to say, I’m very glad this did not suck. And secondly, it’s good to know I’m not alone.”

Doerries: That’s terrific. I was at Camp Pendleton, and a Marine came up to me and said afterward, “Hey, sir, I liked your little skit.” I was like: You’re right, it is a skit.

Sanchez: We’ve talked about this before, but you and I have both noted the difference in communicating with military leadership versus leadership in the American theatre.

Doerries: Oh yeah.

Sanchez: I can get a general to return my emails and my phone calls, but there are a good number of artistic directors who don’t have the time and ability to communicate well.

Doerries: Well, for what it’s worth, maybe the general has more resources.

Sanchez: Yes, that’s a good point. One of my favorite things that Anne Bogart [b. 1951; theatre and opera director; one of the artistic directors of SITI Company] ever said to me was a little advice she gave when I was becoming a director. She said, “You need to figure out if you’re a person who’s round on the outside and square on the inside, or square on the outside and round on the inside.” The military and medical and service communities that we work with are very square on the outside. You get a response—either, “No, thank you,” or, “We’d like your play at our base, please advise.” Done. But in the world we traffic in, because of all of our creativity, we’re round on the outside, so it’s more difficult to communicate, to be hard when we need to be hard. Do you know what I mean?

Doerries: It’s actually been a big revelation for me. Would I rather deal with academics, people in the theatre, foundation people—or with people in the military to try to get something done? No question who I’d want to work with. There’s something so remarkable about the efficiency. There are a lot of inefficiencies, obviously, in the military, but if you give people in the military two pieces of paper with a quick proposal, and maybe one phone call later, it’s executed, usually flawlessly—maybe a little too literally. If you work in the theatre or with academics, you have 20 phone calls. Maybe it’s part of the culture from the get-go, or maybe it’s just when you’re facing life-and-death issues, you don’t have time for all the bullshit. You attack problems more efficiently. There’s something deeply refreshing about it.

Sanchez: Does it make you crazy when well-intentioned people say, “You know, you should hook up with the USO”? That makes me crazy!

Doerries: No. We did partner with the USO on a quarter of a million dollar grant, and they were great partners, and they have an enormous reach.

Sanchez: But it’s about, “Let’s entertain the troops.”

Doerries: It’s different. So the other person person that should be sitting at this table is Adam Driver [b. 1983; actor], whose organization Arts in the Armed Forces, of which I’m on the board, espouses that specific approach. He was in the military, the Marine Corps, he went to Juilliard, he’s had a successful career, and he feels that people in the military deserve not to be condescended to with what passes for entertainment. They deserve to be uplifted and challenged, and so he doesn’t do plays that are explicitly about the military—he does John Patrick Shanley [b. 1950; playwright, theater director, and filmmaker], and he allows the audience to have its own human response. They’re not about discussion, but they’re about raising the bar and saying, you know, it is a form of service to go into these communities and bring something that actually is challenging or uplifting, rather than to you know, simply entertain.

[Arts in the Armed Forces (AITAF) was a non-profit organization that brought arts programming to active-duty service members, veterans, military support staff of the United States, and their families around the world free of charge. It was founded by actors Adam Driver and Joanne Tucker in 2006 and was dissolved in 2023.]

Sanchez: Yeah. Isn’t it cool now that we have a tribe?

Doerries: Yeah, there’s a tribe.

Sanchez: You mentioned Adam, and there’s also Paula Vogel [b. 1951; Pulitzer Prize- and Tony Award-winning playwright].

Doerries: Paula Vogel, and there’s a whole bunch of others.

Sanchez: What’s so fascinating about her is that early in her life, her day job was as a secretary for the Navy.

Sanchez: And now she’s offering herself to do workshops whenever possible for veterans, to teach, to give them tools to write their own plays.

Doerries: And she’s cultivating the talent of this next generation of veteran writers—Maurice Decaul [b. 1980; former Marine; poet, essayist, and playwright], all these other writers she has taken a personal interest in. She’s created space within TCG [Theatre Communications Group; non-profit service organization that promotes professional non-profit theater in the United States; publisher of American Theatre] for veterans, for theatres to come to a different orientation, to what it would mean to actually do something that might move people socially with regard to veterans. There are a lot of people in the space now, and as far as I’m concerned, the more the merrier.

Sanchez: I agree.

[Rob Weinert-Kendt (he/him) is an arts journalist and the editor-in-chief of American Theatre.  He was the founding editor-in-chief of Back Stage West and writes about theater for the New York Times, Time Out New York, and the Los Angeles Times.  He studied film at the University of Southern California and is a composer member of the BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theater Workshop.

[In addition to “Feud for Thought,” in “Documentary and Investigative Theater,” playwright Sanchez figures in “Real Talk About Real Talk,” part 3 of “‘On The Real: Documentary Theatre’” (21 September 2017).]

Theater of War, Part 4

 

[This is the fourth installment in my series on Theater of War (Parts 1 through 3 were posted on 22, 25, and 28 June), the project co-founded by Bryan Doerries in 2009 to perform readings of classic plays in order to spark discussions of various social issues that have beset certain communities in the United States.

[I’ve been working my way through the company’s history in reverse chronological order with published articles from a number of different periodicals to demonstrate how ToW selects and adapts—Doerries, educated in the classics, translates and adjusts the plays and other texts the company uses—to address the different subjects and demographic groups.

[Part 4 is comprised of the final four articles of those I’ve selected, one from Forbes magazine from 2020, and three from the New York Times, covering readings (or other events) in 2017, 2009, and 2007.  If any reader is just joining this thread, I recommend going back to the earlier parts to see the development of ToW’s process and the response from 2020 to 2024.  (There’s a brief profile of Theater of War Productions in Part 1 and commentary throughout all three installments.] 

“THEATER OF WAR: USING GREEK TRAGEDY TO HELP
FRONTLINE MEDICAL WORKERS COPE DURING COVID-19”
by Robert Glatter, MD 

[Dr. Robert Glatter’s discussion of how Theater of War addressed medical first responders’ stress during the pandemic through readings of classic Greek tragedies, such as Sophocles’ Ajax, in Forbes appeared on the magazine’s website on 4 August 2020.  Glatter is, himself, a medical professional.]

During the Covid-19 pandemic, being a frontline healthcare worker has been one of the most difficult jobs, involving both personal and professional challenges which are truly unprecedented.

Many workers have suffered in silence, experiencing ongoing feelings of anger, fear and betrayal. And for some, the pandemic has led to suicide—a painful reminder of the fragility of life, and the ongoing toll of this crisis.

Confronting death on a daily basis and feeling unable to provide optimal care of patients—from inadequate inventory of personal protective equipment (PPE) to safely treat patients, making difficult decisions involving allocation of limited lifesaving resources, or having lack of adequate staffing itself—embodies the concept of “moral injury” which has been devastating to all healthcare providers.

Moral injury is distinct from “burnout” and was first offered as an explanation for military veterans [who] were not responding to treatment of PTSD. It refers to the emotional, physical and spiritual harm people experience after “perpetrating, failing to prevent, or bearing witness to acts that transgress deeply held moral beliefs or expectations.” Simply put, repetitive episodes of moral injury, combined with physical and emotional exhaustion can lead [to] paralyzing anxiety, depression, PTSD and ultimately suicide.

Addressing such moral injury is challenging to say the least, but a unique collaboration between the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute For Bioethics, Johns Hopkins Programs in Art, Humanities, and Health and Theater of War Productions, a production company that presents dramatic readings of Greek tragedies to modern and contemporary works— aims to do just that. At its core, Theater of War for Frontline Medical Providers represents an innovative project that has the ability to reach all frontline medical workers—nurses, doctors, respiratory therapists, social workers and hospital staff— who may be struggling in isolation, providing them the opportunity to name and communalize their experiences, connect with colleagues, and access available resources.

But Bryan Doerries, artistic director, and co-founder of Theater of War Productions, realized that his approach—originally conceived to help veterans cope with intense emotional distress and the lingering effects of moral injury from combat—could be communalized to help health care workers who experience this similar injury on a daily basis.

“To be clear, Theater of War Productions’ approach is not medicine, nor is it therapy,” said Doerries. “The aim of our projects is to lift people out of isolation and into community. If there is one thing I have observed over the past twelve years of doing this work it is that trauma, loss, and moral distress all leave people feeling isolated and alone.”

Doerries ultimately views Theater of War for Frontline Medical Providers “as a public health campaign, and the message of the ancient stories we perform for medical providers is simply this: You are not alone in your community, not alone across the country and the world, not alone across time.”

“Through Theater of War for Frontline Medical Providers’ performances, clinicians of all types are invited to connect to the universal struggles embodied by the Greek tragedies and through them to connect to their own experiences during the pandemic,” said Cynda Rushton, PhD, RN, Professor of Clinical Ethics at the Berman Institute of Bioethics/School of Nursing, Johns Hopkins University, who leads the collaborative effort with Theater of War for Frontline Medical Providers.  “Through the performance and the panel that follows, it is possible to give words to feelings, thoughts and experiences that clinicians are carrying and in doing so to find some solace that they are not alone in their experiences and that they are neither failing or deficient because of their responses to these unprecedented circumstances. They learn that they are experiencing normal responses to an abnormal situation and by recognizing this, begin to restore their integrity by cultivating and strengthening their moral resilience.”

In a nutshell, Theater of War for Frontline Medical Providers’ current approach during the pandemic is this: harness the power and messaging of Greek Tragedy, and use it as a medium to explore moral dilemmas that frontline care providers confront on a daily basis via Zoom Webinars, followed by a de-brief that explores real-life issues which mirror the themes that are displayed during the actual production. After the performance, the actors are replaced by four panelists—a diverse group of front-line medical providers—who then respond to what they heard in the plays that melds with their own experiences of caring for patients during the pandemic.

[The Zoom webinars were a coronavirus-protection measure during the pandemic, when performances were also remote over Zoom.  Before and since the pandemic, the discussions, like the readings, were live before an in-person audience. Note Glatter’s remark below.]

After the panelists’ remarks, a facilitator encourages the audience to join the discussion with a series of questions encouraging reflection and dialogue about themes raised by the plays. The discussion provides an opportunity for the medical workers in the audience to take center stage, sharing the impact of COVID-19 on their lives and finding comfort and support in the community of their peers.

The sharing of common experiences and their desire to improve life after such emotional trauma creates a powerful bond, but also empowers workers to approach management with constructive criticism and potential solutions as they embark on their emotional recovery and healing. Prior to the pandemic, Theater of War held powerful stage performances, but Covid-19 changed all that, requiring an adaptation to the world of online Zoom theatre.

Late last month, Theater of War for Frontline Medical Providers performed “Ajax” [442 or 441 BCE; by Sophocles (497/496-406/405 BCE)], a famous Greek Tragedy set during the Trojan War [legendary, decade-long siege and sacking of Troy, a city in Asia Minor, by the Greeks in the 11th, 12th, or 13th century BCE], to enable EMS providers to draw parallels between their personal struggles during the pandemic to those experienced by a mythical Greek figure.  It explored the themes of anger, jealousy, revenge, misdirected rage, and guilt leading to suicide.

Presented on July 30th [2020], with over 900 Zoom viewers from over 18 countries, “Ajax” brought out feelings ranging from personal risk, betrayal, anger, sadness, abandonment, powerlessness, survivor’s guilt, along with remorse. In a post performance survey, 88% of respondents said that participating in Theater of War Frontline reduced their sense of isolation, while nearly 79% said that viewing made it more likely for them to use resources if needed, according to Doerries.

“When frontline medical providers, who may be reluctant to talk openly about the impact the pandemic has had upon them, their clinical practice, and their families, see their own struggles reflected back to them in ancient stories, it creates a non-threatening space in which it’s easier to talk about challenging topics, such as guilt, betrayal, deferred grief, personal risk, and deviations from standards of care, opening a door to pathways of healing, community, resilience, and moral repair,” added Doerries.

Communal activities via Greek Tragedy

Doerries further explains that the ancient Greeks realized that it wasn’t healthy for people to be “overwhelmed with emotion in the midst of violence, illness, and conflict. “But they also knew something that I think we’ve lost touch with as a society—that it is morally and emotionally toxic to defer and compartmentalize our emotions indefinitely. This is one of the factors that leads to burnout, depression, and even suicide,” he added.

“The Greeks knew that there had to be a time and place for people who had experienced violence and death to be given permission and empowered to acknowledge their emotions, collectively, as a community,” offered Doerries. “The word amphitheater in ancient Greek means ‘the place where we see in both directions.’ In the amphitheater, I see you and you see me. It is the place where we bear witness to the truth of our respective struggles.”

Doerries is “convinced that humans heal best in groups, and that isolation and betrayal are the wounds that cut the deepest. In this regard, and out of necessity, the Greeks developed tragedy as a tool to communalize the trauma of nearly 80 years of war and a pestilence that killed nearly one-third of the Athenian population [see my note on the Plague of Athens in Part 3, “Can Greek Tragedy Get Us Through the Pandemic?”].”

He qualifies that we are quite fortunate the process still works well. “It’s like an external hard drive that just needs to be plugged into the right audience: the ancient technology knows what to do, and so does the audience, as evidenced by the dynamic, powerful discussions that take place during our events.”

An article by Rushton, Doerries and colleagues published last month in the Lancet [C. Rushton, B. Doerries, J. Greene, G. Geller, et al., “Dramatic interventions in the tragedy of the COVID-19 pandemic,” Lancet, 23 July 2020] focuses on how their initiative is equipped to help medical providers, but especially in the setting of Covid-19. The authors write that “we have found that presenting scenes from ancient tragedies about complex ethical situations for frontline medical providers generates an open, non-threatening space in which health personnel can begin to process, interrogate, share, and bear witness to experiences of loss, betrayal, grief, and other forms of moral suffering during the COVID-19 pandemic.”

“A nearly universal response to moral suffering is that we feel alone; that we are the only one who is struggling; that everyone else is coping better than I am,” explains Rushton. “The design of Theater of War for Frontline Medical Providers creates a safe space for reflection, insight and wisdom by fostering a community of belonging: often clinicians are able to meet each other as human beings rather than their titles, roles or professions.”

“This dissolving of hierarchy allows us to connect to our shared vulnerability and to see the humanity in others and ourselves. It also allows clinicians to loosen the grip of unrealistic expectations and the disempowering narratives of powerlessness to see themselves as already having resources to meet the challenges they confront with the support of their community,” she added.

Dr. Loree Sutton, a retired Army Brigadier General, psychiatrist, and former Commissioner of Veterans Services in New York City, feels that Theater of War’s benefit may offer a form of deeper connection than we can gain from our virtual world which often seems relatively empty and fleeting.

“Theater of War for Frontline Medical Providers draws us in as active participants and engaged witnesses—the very opposite of what our social media world of tweets, clicks and ads is designed to elicit. In short, Theater of War for Frontline Medical Providers facilitates the experience of being human — eschewing titles depicting stature, hierarchy divulging status or expectations demanding performance or deliverables.”

“Participants, including medical providers, respond accordingly — with a renewed sense of purpose, engagement and connection to community, enjoined by Theater of War’s parting gift: the work serves to comfort the afflicted and to afflict the comfortable,”  she added.

Mental Health Legacies of Covid-19

But the broader issue is that we need to discuss the mental health legacies of Covid-19. Simply put, there is a wave of adverse mental health effects building, and the legacy we will write will be determined by how we handle this surge of health-related effects.

Yet, Doerries argues that Covid-19 is actually an extension of a pandemic that has largely been under appreciated. “There was a pandemic before the COVID-19 pandemic—of unaddressed trauma and mental health; poverty, substandard housing; homelessness; addiction; educational apartheid; and state-sanctioned violence against communities of color,” he said. “COVID-19, and the awakening that has accompanied it, has brought all of this into the light, showing the world how social justice and healthcare are inextricably connected and interdependent.”

“Given what we have seen and learned as a society over the past five months—things that are impossible to unsee and unlearn—there is seemingly infinite work now to be done to address the mental and physical wellbeing of people who have been systemically cut off from adequate healthcare, including mental health services and resources: in order to be successful in this effort we'll also need to break down the stigma associated with accessing mental healthcare in many communities, when it’s available,” Doerries offered.

“I think this needs to start within the field of medicine, with frank and open dialogue about the impact of the pandemic on frontline medical providers, and then radiate out into the general population, in larger, community-driven conversations. My hope is that the mental health legacy of COVID-19 will be an awakening and consciousness that leads to social and mental health justice,” he added.

Rushton concurs and adds a sense of reality: “I suspect that we will see a full range of physical, psychological and moral responses that will need targeted and sustained attention. What keeps me up at night is whether we will be able to sustain the healthcare workforce during and after the pandemic.  The level of exhaustion among clinicians across the country is profound.  The heroic response has now progressed to a phase of deep disillusionment and despair as the pandemic marches on without an end in sight.”

Theater of War’s Positive Legacy

Theater of War for Frontline Medical Providers premiered on May 24^th with 417 medical providers from the Baltimore area logging onto Zoom for a performance featuring Frances McDormand, Jesse Eisenberg, David Strathairn, and Frankie Faison. In a post-performance evaluation, 93% of respondents reported that the program offered new insights about their experience during COVID; 92% said the program made it easier to talk about difficult subjects related to COVID.

As a result of this success, the Arts in Health Initiative of the Laurie M. Tisch Illumination Fund provided a grant to fund 10 performances of the project in New York City.

“We got to know Theater of War’s extraordinary work through prior projects, and when they came to us with the idea of a new project to help frontline medical providers, we immediately saw why it is so timely and important, said Laurie M. Tisch, President, Laurie M. Tisch Illumination Fund. “Theater of War Productions is stepping up to help heal the people who are caring for us through this terrible pandemic, and we are proud to be among the supporters making it possible.”

“We know from the organizations in our Arts in Health initiative that the arts are a particularly effective tool to address issues related to mental health challenges such as trauma, and they provide unique ways to combat the stigma that makes it difficult for people to seek help. These are issues that frontline healthcare providers are facing every day as they risk their lives and health to save ours,” added Tisch.

It’s also possible that Theater of War’s approach may serve as a means to tap into and alter neural networks which develop as a response to emotional trauma, quite distinct from more traditional approaches such as cognitive behavioral or group therapy.

“There is every reason to believe that this type of theatrical production is facilitating a powerful form of processing that we know from other research is a means to potentially mitigate against the negative outcome of trauma,” said Christine Moutier, M.D., Chief Medical Officer for the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. “That it uses not only major talent portraying events and themes related to moral injury may be a way to engage different parts of the brain that likely connect experiences and memory with emotional and intellectual neurological processing.”

“This may make it unique from other forms of processing that primarily engage our intellectual mind—like facilitated groups and individual conversations between us and therapists, peers or mentors. One hope is that participants would continue the dialog in some way and even build on those gains in their relationships at work or at home,” she added.

Moutier also offered that “it engages a tactic of using ancient events to evoke people's humanity living through present challenges, which the ancient tragedies also did in their own time.”

[Robert Glatter, MD, is a contributor to Forbes magazine who covers breaking news in medicine, medical technology, and public health.  He’s an emergency physician on staff at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City, where he has practiced for the past 15 years.  He also serves as an adviser and editor to Medscape Emergency Medicine, an educational portal for physicians, and an affiliate of WebMD.  Glatter’s other time is spent with his private house-call practice, DR911, providing medical care to both travelers and residents in Manhattan.  He has a keen interest in medical technology and public health education.] 

*  *  *  *
“ARTIST IN RESIDENCE FOR NEW YORK CITY”
by Jennifer Schuessler 

[Jennifer Schuessler’s report on Bryan Doerries’s being named an “artist in residence” in New York City ran in the New York Times of 3 March 2017.  While it is about Theater of War Productions, this article is about an honor bestowed on Doerries rather than the performance work of his company.]

Bryan Doerries, the artistic director of the Brooklyn-based group Theater of War Productions, has taken community-based performances based on ancient Greek tragedy and other classic texts to more than 600 military bases, prisons, hospitals and other venues around the world, where he has used them to spur conversations about violence, trauma and survival.

But in the next two years, Mr. Doerries will be sticking to a stage closer to home: the entire city of New York.

The city’s Department of Veterans Services and Department of Cultural Affairs has announced that Mr. Doerries is its newest public artist in residence. During his tenure, Theater of War will stage more than 60 free events in venues in all five boroughs, drawing on its repertory while developing new productions tailored to different communities.

“For the last nine years, we’ve been designing projects and then taking them out into red-state America, frankly: military bases, prisons, megachurches,” Mr. Doerries said in an interview. “We don’t want that work to end, but this will allow us to go deep into some of the same social issues in a more concentrated way here.”

Theater of War, founded in 2009, is based on the idea that Greek tragedy is “an ancient technology,” as Mr. Doerries likes to put it, that when plugged into the right audience can provoke an intense, cathartic response. Mr. Doerries also has help from a deep roster of prominent actors, who both bring in curious crowds and break through their defenses with no-holds-barred intensity of delivery.

“Hercules in Brooklyn,” a piece that had its premiere in October at the Brooklyn Public Library, featured Paul Giamatti, Jeffrey Wright and Ashanti, reading excerpts from Euripides’ [480-ca. 406 BCE] “The Madness of Hercules” [ca. 416 BCE] in an over-the-top-style — “Make them so uncomfortable they wish they hadn’t come,” is Mr. Doerries’s typical direction. It was followed by an hour of searching discussion about gun violence, which many audience members had experienced firsthand. (The library will be the co-producer of Mr. Doerries’s residency, which is being supported by a $1.365 million grant from the Stavros Niarchos Foundation.)

The first presentation of Mr. Doerries’s residency will be a reading of Sophocles’ “Ajax” and “Philoctetes” [409 BCE] on March 20 [2017] at the Greene Space in Manhattan, featuring Mr. Giamatti, Frances McDormand, David Strathairn and Reg E. Cathey. That will be followed by a performance at the Crown Heights branch of the Brooklyn Public Library on April 6 and a bilingual presentation at the Pregones and Puerto Rican Traveling Theater in the Bronx on May 6.

[Jennifer Schuessler is a culture reporter for the New York Times, covering intellectual life and the world of ideas.  She’s based in New York. 

*  *  *  *
“THE ANGUISH OF WAR FOR TODAY’S SOLDIERS,
EXPLORED BY SOPHOCLES”
by Patrick Healy 

[The New York Times published Patrick Healy’s report on ToW’s readings of Ajax and Philoctetes for audiences of servicemen and -women on bases around the country on 12 November 2009.  These were among the company’s first performances after Bryan Doerries co-founded it that year.]

The ancient Greeks had a shorthand for the mental anguish of war, for post-traumatic stress disorder and even for outbursts of fratricidal bloodshed like last week’s shootings at Fort Hood. They would invoke the names of mythological military heroes who battled inner demons: Achilles, consumed by the deaths of his men; Philoctetes, hollowed out from betrayals by fellow officers; Ajax, warped with so much rage that he wanted to kill his comrades.

Now officials at the Defense Department are turning to the Greeks to explore the psychic impact of war.

The Pentagon has provided $3.7 million for an independent production company, Theater of War, to visit 50 military sites through at least next summer and stage readings from two plays by Sophocles, “Ajax” and “Philoctetes,” for service members. So far the group has performed at Fort Riley in Kansas; at the Uniformed Services University in Bethesda, Md.; and at last week’s Warrior Resilience Conference in Norfolk, Va.

The scenes from “Ajax” show the title character plotting to murder Greek generals who have disgraced him. Under a trance by the goddess Athena, he ends up slaughtering farm animals he thinks are the officers. Ajax’s concubine is depicted as trying to bring him to his senses; the final scene shows Ajax in agony, committing suicide.

The “Philoctetes” segment portrays Greek military leaders plotting to trick the hero into leading an attack on Troy, and shows Philoctetes struggling with both physical and emotional pain.

A special performance was held on Monday night [16 November 2009] for dozens of service members, veterans, relatives and Pentagon officials at St. Vincent’s Hospital in Manhattan [Catholic hospital, closed in 2010]. The actors in the one-hour reading were David Strathairn, Jeffrey Wright, Gloria Reuben and Adam Driver, a former Marine.

The investigation of Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the Army psychiatrist accused of killing 13 at Fort Hood in Texas [5 November 2009], loomed over the reading, though it was mentioned only a few times during the post-performance discussion. Still, there were echoes of Fort Hood, especially in the story of Ajax in the pain that soldiers and their loved ones faced then and now, and in the questions raised by the play about whether war can drive warriors to acts of evil.

“These plays are part of a 2,500-year history of mental and emotional pain for soldiers that run up to the present day,” said Mr. Strathairn, an Academy Award nominee for his portrayal of Edward R. Murrow in the 2005 film “Good Night, and Good Luck.”

Bryan Doerries, a writer and director who founded Theater of War, said the performances were not psychotherapy, noting, for instance, that the efficacy of his group’s work had not been studied in clinical trials. He described the effort as a public health project to help service members and relatives overcome stigmas about psychological injuries by showing that some of the bravest heroes suffered mentally from battle.

“Through theater we’re trying to offer some ideas and experiences for our troops and veterans to think about when they don’t feel comfortable opening up about their private thoughts,” said Mr. Doerries, whose work grew out of an earlier effort, the Philoctetes Project, that drew media attention for a performance at the Juilliard School last fall.

[The Philoctetes Project in 2008 was an early effort by Doerries that occurred before he co-founded Theatre of War Productions.  A small group of U.S. Military Academy cadets traveled to New York City to hear the reading at Juilliard.  The cast was made up of some illustrious names from the worlds of the stage and film, and alongside these was a Juilliard student who was also a former Marine.  His name was Adam Driver, and he went on to appear in several ToW readings after he became a successful professional actor.]  

“Sophocles was himself a general, and Athens during his time was at war for decades,” he continued. “These two plays were seen by thousands of citizen-soldiers. By performing these scenes, we’re hoping that our modern-day soldiers will see their difficulties in a larger historical context, and perhaps feel less alone.”

Film screenings and theater performances have long been staples of mental health and rehabilitation services, intended to provoke discussions among viewers who might dislike talk therapy but who can identify with characters or plot points.

For active-duty soldiers, stigmas about therapy can be even greater, psychologists say. Concerns that they might be passed over for promotion or regarded as weak have prevented some from seeking help from mental health professionals.                         

“There is good evidence that active-duty personnel worry about the stigma of post-traumatic stress disorder,” said Richard J. McNally, the director of clinical training in the psychology department of Harvard University.

Some troubled veterans do not seek help even after their service careers are over, said Dr. McNally, who has worked in the field of trauma and memory, especially with war veterans, since the mid-1980s but is not involved with Mr. Doerries’s project.

“If seeing the Theater of War can reduce stigma and help veterans seek these treatments, then that will be wonderful indeed,” he added.

Because of the Fort Hood shootings the Pentagon canceled an interview about the project with Brig. Gen. Loree Sutton, an Army psychiatrist and director of the Defense Centers of Excellence for Psychological Health and Traumatic Brain Injury, which awarded the contract to Theater of War.

But General Sutton was on hand Monday night at St. Vincent’s, where she told the audience after the performance that Theater of War was an important vehicle for “sharing pain and the promise of learning and growing and healing.”

“We knew that never in the history of our republic have we placed so much on the shoulders of so few on behalf of so many,” she said.

The reading kept the audience rapt. As Ajax, Mr. Wright, who won an Emmy and a Tony playing Belize in “Angels in America” [1993-94], was by turns thundering and growling, and threatened to lash the back of his Greek enemy Odysseus “until it’s red with blood.” He implored a comrade, “Cut my throat right now.”

“I was the bravest in battle, never lost my wits,” Mr. Wright nearly screamed as his character faced his unraveling mental state. “What a joke my life has become.”

Ms. Reuben, as Tecmessa, who lived with Ajax as his wife, begged him to think of his loved ones before doing harm. “The stain of it will shame your family,” she said.

During the post-performance discussion with the audience, led by a panel of therapists and military personnel, veterans from the Vietnam War, Iraq and Afghanistan spoke about their own sleepless nights, drug addictions and isolation from family members. A Vietnam veteran described being homeless for 10 years, suffering breakdowns but at last “getting my dignity back” in part from mental health care.

A psychologist on the panel, Michael Kramer, said that combat stress for soldiers could “erode their personhood,” and he connected the ancient traumas with the modern-day pain that “we’re reading about in the papers.”

Tanya Weekes was among the audience members. As the evening concluded, her husband, Sgt. Daniel T. Weekes, who served in Iraq with the Army National Guard in 2004-5, slipped out into the hallway. He still struggles with memories of a particularly bloody bombing during his tour in Mosul, she said, though he has come a long way with psychotherapy. He found the scenes hard to watch at times, she added.

“And the play helped me, definitely, because I could relate to the characters,” Ms. Weekes said. “When soldiers come home from war, you never know what to expect. They might get violent. That was my biggest fear.

“We at home might not have been on the battlefield, but it sure feels like it.”

Sgt. First Class Tony Gonzalez, an Iraq combat veteran from Brooklyn who was on the panel, recalled that post-traumatic stress disorder was rarely discussed when he first joined the Army. He described his own pain after his platoon captain was killed and he went to pay respects to the man’s wife, also a friend and member of the military.

And he praised the use of theater to help put a spotlight on trauma.

“I’ve been Ajax,” he said. “I’ve spoken to Ajax.”

[Patrick Healy was a theater writer for the New York Times until 2015, when he shifted over to politics as the national political correspondent.  He became political editor in 2018 and is now Deputy Opinion Editor of the Times.] 

*  *  *  *
“THE DIFFICULT PATIENT, A PROBLEM
OLD AS HISTORY (OR OLDER)”
by Abigail Zuger 

[Dr. Abigail Zuger’s report on a reading of Philoctetes for medical students organized by Bryan Doerries at the request of a member of the faculty of Cornell University’s Weill Medical School ran in the New York Times of 6 March 2007.  It appears that this was the first such reading, a prototype of what Doerries would do when he established Theater of War Productions two years later.

[This article was referenced in Elif Batuman’s 2020 New Yorker article in Part 3 and I gave the bibliographic citation for it and the New York Times article by Patrick Healy above in a note in that post.]

The sick man was a misery to himself and to everyone around him. For one thing, his personal hygiene was horrific. He stank. And he was constantly in pain, moaning and groaning until you began to wonder if he was doing it just for effect. Worst of all, he was a mean old cuss, angry and embittered after years of illness. All he did was complain.

A few dozen medical students, most of them in their first year at Weill Medical College of Cornell University, listened with concern to a presentation about him a few weeks ago. Eventually, they knew, they would run into difficult patients like this one.

The sick man had been a mover and shaker once, with a place in high government circles. But then he had the accident. His wound became infected. It was all downhill from there. He quickly became unable to work, and his distress upset everyone around him. Finally, his business associates forced him into long-term residential care.

Some of the faculty members in the conference room nodded in recognition. It was a case right out of a chronic-care ward in a Veterans Administration hospital.

The patient stayed in his residence for years. Not a single visitor dropped by. He grew prematurely aged, a miserable, stinking, moaning wreck. The infection in his foot was untreatable and oozed foul pus. Pain medication helped only slightly. He became obsessed, focusing all his anger on the old crowd, the false friends who had abandoned him. He blamed them for everything.

The diagnosticians in the room suspected that the patient had a chronic osteomyelitis of the foot, with an anaerobic component accounting for the odor. Perhaps the infection had spread elsewhere through the bloodstream. And then there were his psychiatric diagnoses: reactive depression with psychotic features, possibly an underlying character disorder. He had certainly been a little narcissistic way back when.

Nine years after the sick man’s admission, a stranger came knocking at his door. The visitor was a young man, just a kid, really. He knew the sick man’s history, but the sight and sound and smell were overwhelming anyway. The kid was filled with pity and revulsion in equal measure. He wanted to help, but had been advised by his supervisor to be dignified and professional, to do his business and leave. Still, the patient was so miserable. Every time the young man tried to leave, the sick man pleaded with him to stay. “Don’t go!” the sick man cried. “Please. Stay with me.”

The visitor was torn. What should he do? He could have been a medical student on his first clinical clerkship, transfixed by the misery of a patient everyone else had labeled a miserable old crock years before. He tried to reassure the sick man, but the usual platitudes sounded hollow, and the man became only more agitated, almost incoherent, pain and fury all garbled together.

Fortunately, at this juncture the demigod Heracles showed up to straighten everything out. The medical students breathed a sigh of relief and clapped heartily.

These students and this patient will, of course, never meet; that would require a giant warp in the fabric of time and history. The sick man with the infected foot, Philoctetes, was marooned by his comrades on a deserted Greek island back in the mists of ancient myth. The rest of the crowd all headed off to sack Troy, but the kid, Neoptolemus, son of Achilles, was sent back to steal Philoctetes’s magic bow and arrows (without which the Greeks could not prevail). The wily Odysseus was waiting on the beach for the kid to get the goods. It was all only a footnote to the bloody saga of the Trojan war.

But to Dr. Lyuba Konopasek, a pediatrician who directs the medical school’s first-year course in Medicine, Patients and Society, Sophocles’s play, from the fifth century B.C., had so much to say to medical students and doctors that she invited Bryan Doerries, a classicist and director, to stage a reading for her course.

After the actors finished, students and faculty members talked for a long time about how students often feel helpless in the hospital, torn between befriending patients with incurable illness and sticking to a professional script. Sophocles somehow got that tenuous position just right, just as he knew that sick people, isolated and transformed by chronic disease, dread being alone and forgotten more than they dread pain or even death.

“We have created a subclass of patients like Philoctetes with modern medicine,” Mr. Doerries said. “They are abandoned on their islands to live long, but have we risen to the challenge of taking emotional care of them?”

Dr. Edith Langner, an internist, said, “Philoctetes’ horror was the horror of abandonment.” And yet, she continued, as Sophocles accurately pointed out, it can take so little from doctors to turn that around: a daily visit, a few minutes of friendly conversation, or sometimes just a new young ear to hear the old story all over again.

[Abigail Zuger is a medical doctor who works in New York City as an infectious disease specialist and writes on medical issues for the New York Times.  She’s the author of Strong Shadows: Scenes from an Inner City AIDS Clinic (W. H. Freeman Inc., 1995).]