If You Liked Theater of War…

We’ve spent a lot of time talking about Bryan Doerries’ excellent project Theater of War, which takes new translations of Ajax and Philoctetes to military audiences.  After seeing the Boston performances at A.R.T. earlier this month, I thought you’d like to know about a similarly-themed theatre company called American Records. (They’re also on Facebook.)

American Records Theater Company is run by the amazingly talented KJ Sanchez — actor, director, playwright, renaissance woman. (Here’s a semi-up-to-date bio.) Check out American Records’ play ReENTRY, a docudrama by KJ and Emily Ackerman, built from interviews with Marines returning from service in Afghanistan and Iraq, asking “how we – as families, as a culture, a society, and as a country – can help.”

The New York Times‘ ArtsBeat Blog ran a Q&A on the play, which is worth reading.  Here’s a review from the NYT about the 2009 run at Two River Theater Company.

You may also be interested in a piece called Boots on the Ground by Laura Kepley and D. Salem Smith, which was written for, and ran at, Trinity Rep in Providence in 2006.  The playwrights interviewed over 70 Rhode Island residents about the effects of war on the community, including veterans, soldiers’ wives and girlfriends, clergy, journalists, etc.  Like the Theater of War performances, Boots on the Ground built the experience of seeing that play so that act one was the performance, and act two comprised a town hall style meeting with audience members and veterans.  Check out this account of one audience member’s experience of the show.  Here’s another quite powerful account.  Here’s a Flickr stream of production photos.  And here’s a feature from the Phoenix on the show.

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