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Theater of War

Theater of War

Sophocles wrote plays nearly 2400 years ago, and yet they still speak to us today, perhaps with greater urgency than ever before. In his time, we know that Sophocles wrote for an audience comprised mainly of combat veterans, or citizen soldiers. He had been elected general twice and knew firsthand about the difficulties of war and of soldiers returning to civilian life.

Dr. Jonathan Shay, recipient of a 2007 MacArthur Award and author of Achilles in Vietnam, argues that, “Athenian theater was created and performed by combat veterans for an audience of combat veterans; they did this to enable returning soldiers to function together in a democratic polity.” Following Shay’s argument, it could be said that Western theater arose and evolved out of the therapeutic need to hear and tell the soldier’s story.

I was recently invited by the U.S. Marine Corps to present scenes from my translations of Sophocles’ AJAX and PHILOCTETES to several hundred military leaders, chaplains, military wives, and combat trauma specialists in San Diego on August 13, 2008. These plays intimately depict soldiers struggling with psychic wounds and chronic illnesses, and have something relevant and universal to say to the armed forces today.

For about a year, I have been in talks with various branches of the military about presenting these plays to veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. Not surprisingly, the Marines were the first to open their doors to the ancient Greeks. The reading on August 13 marks the beginning of what I hope will be a long-term project to bring Greek tragedy to the military community and the military community to American theater.

Bryan Doerries
Director/Translator

Philoctetes @ The Philoctetes Center

If you attended this reading/discussion, please leave your comments here.

THE PHILOCTETES CENTER FOR THE MULTIDISCIPLINARY STUDY OF IMAGINATION
at the New York Psychoanalytic Institute
(EDWARD NERSESSIAN AND FRANCIS LEVY, DIRECTORS)

Play Reading & Roundtable
Saturday, December 8 at 1:30pm
at
The Philoctetes Center
247 East 82nd Street

Sophocles' Philoctetes
Adapted by Bryan Doerries
With: Jesse Eisenberg, Adam Ludwig, John Schmerling, and Michael Stuhlbarg

Followed by ...
Doctor/Patient Relationships
Over the past two years, Bryan Doerries' translation of Philoctetes has enjoyed staged readings at Anne Bogart's SITI Company, The Culture Project's Impact Festival, and, most recently, at The Weill Medical College of Medicine of Cornell University. In every instance, audiences have recognized their fathers, uncles, lovers, and sometimes even themselves in Sophocles' depiction of the suffering soldier. At the most recent reading, medical students and doctors saw their patients in Philoctetes, connecting the myth with their own experiences in hospitals and hospice wards.

The roots of western medicine and western theater both spring from the same ancient soil. While medical students today still learn the Hippocratic oath, very few know the story of Philoctetes—one of the oldest extant descriptions of chronic illness in western literature. Sophocles' version of the myth focuses on the special bond that forms between a young, inexperienced soldier and a suffering veteran, whom he has been ordered to betray. Torn between allegiance to his army and compassion for a fellow human, the young soldier soon finds himself struggling with difficult questions that continue to weigh, 2400 years after the play was first performed, upon medical students and doctors today.

What are the ethical boundaries of the doctor/patient relationship? How and why do doctors emotionally abandon their patients? This roundtable will address these questions and more, using Sophocles' play as a point of departure. The discussion will explore how imagination and originality can be brought to the understanding of the complex network of transference, empathy and resistance that characterizes the doctor/patient relationship.

Philoctetes: a reading for doctors 6/6/07

On June 6, 2007, an audience of doctors convened at Weill Medical College of Cornell University in New York City for a special reading of Sopholcles' Philoctetes, featuring: David Strathairn, Jesse Eisenberg, Dudley Knight, and John Schmerling. In a post discussion, facilitated by Dr. Lyuba Konopasek, doctors and visitors addressed issues of medical ethics, patient care, combat trauma, and chronic illness through the lens this 2400-year-old play.

If you were present at the reading on June 6, please post your comments and ideas here!

"Let's get back to the Greeks for a war play please."

Re: Charles Isherwood's NY Times article from May 27, 2007, entitled: "Drama: Another Casualty of War," which argues that American audiences are suffering from war fatigue, the following reader wrote on June 3, 2007:

What the Greeks Knew

To the Editor:

I do not share Charles Isherwood’s lament about the closing of “Journey’s End.” Having seen the plodding production, I was distressed by the lack of energy and projection by the actors, the dimly lighted stage and the horrendous bunker set that must cut off all sightlines in the balcony and the mezzanine. We are weary of the war in Iraq, as well as of an old-fashioned play performed lethargically that gets rave reviews. Let’s get back to the Greeks for a war play please.

Daniel P. Quinn

Morristown, N.J.

To read Isherwood's article, go to: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/27/theater/27ishe.html

Philoctetes: That's Sick!

Re: Abigail Zuger's Science Times article about the Philoctetes reading for medical students at Cornell's Weill College of Medicine on February 15, 2007, Village Voice theater critic Alexis Soloski posted the following on The Voice's blog:

There's an article in today's New York Times about using Sophocles's Philoctetes as a teaching tool for medical students. Apparently they've found that the play's depictions of illness and the reactions of friends and family to the sick person are psychologically accurate today. Marvelous, no?

I've long loved this play both as an academic and as a critic (sort of like those Frosted Mini-Wheats commercials, the grown-up loves the ethical and social implications while the kid in me loves the emotional content!). More recently we've been treated to Seamus Heaney's The Cure at Troy, a most eloquent update, but I think it's time for a restaging of the Sophocles original. Takers?