Introduction
I first heard Professor Peter Meineck speak at the CANE Summer Institute held at Dartmouth in 2011. Professor Meineck, Clinical Associate Professor of Classics at New York University, and Founder of Aquila Theater gave three astounding presentations on his work in ancient Greek theater: The first explored how masks such as those believed to be worn by ancient actors affect the viewing experience and the audience profoundly. His second presentation took up the viewing experience of audiences at the site of the festival of Dionysus in Athens, where the shape and orientation of the seating area was debated vis-a-vis the approach to the theater and its setting.
At the close of the Institute, Professor Meineck presented his work with Aquila Theater, the company that he founded in New York City, and in particular, its work with post-combat American servicemen, servicewomen and the communities to which they have returned. Utilizing scenes from Greek drama and epic poetry, Aquila members open a dialogue among community members that can address issues veterans face upon their return from war. We watched a demonstration of a dramatic reading of one such text used in this work: the recognition scene in Book 23 of the Odyssey, in which Odysseus is recognized by first his nursemaid Eurykleia. The homecoming of Odysseus echoed the return of veterans who must reclaim their identities in their home communities.
I was excited to hear about how the ancient texts that I have come to love and appreciate are also serving communities across America to initiate constructive dialogue and to address critical needs. This furthermore inspired me to teach the Iliad in translation and to discuss with several classes of high school students the current relevance of ancient epic poetry to returning veterans. Our reading of the Iliad concluded with a project in which we temporarily adopted a serviceman who had been recently medically discharged after he sustained a traumatic brain injury. My students wrote beautiful and thoughtful sentiments of thanks and appreciation in lovely cards for him after his early retirement.
Recently I inquired of Professor Meineck whether he would be willing to give us at CANE an update on this work that Aquila is doing with the public and where it is headed next. He graciously agreed to an interview and the following is my representation of this informative and enjoyable conversation.
How does Aquila Theater reach the public and veterans with its projects?
Ancient Greeks/Modern Lives, and now YouStories, was a project begun in 2007 to bring veterans and people in the community together, in public venues such as libraries to discuss what these ancient texts mean to us today, and how they can teach understanding of the Veteran experience and the ramifications of war. The fundamental idea behind these programs is applying the humanities, and in this case, the Classics, to create community engagement and foster an informed public discourse.
In 2010 the program was expanded into Ancient Greeks/Modern Lives with an $800,000 Chairman’s Special Award from the NEH. Now Aquila was able to visit over 100 sites in predominantly inner city and rural communities and in 2012 the program was even staged at the White House. Aquila hired over 50 classical scholars to work on this massive program and it was very successful.
Early on, programming served the general public, but many veterans attended and wanted to speak about the Iliad and war. In the planning of the next phase we began to focus specifically on the veteran community: those who served, their families, friends and fellow Americans. We stated new aims which had been influenced by collaboration with the veterans: to foster dialogue, to learn more about ancient literature from people who had experienced combat first-hand and to think deeply about what these ancient texts mean to us today.
The current program also funded by the NEH, called YouStories, involves both public programs and a specially developed story-collecting video app in partnership with the Library of Congress. In this project we have taken our veteran engagement much further and employed and trained them as performers and moderators. We are now seeing many young men and women from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan wanting to start to place their experiences in context and seek community and support.
Despite the proliferation of veteran outreach programs, we felt that few projects were actually hiring returning veterans as consultants or as employees in these programs. We wanted to create opportunities and open the doors for them to careers in the arts and humanities and to continue to learn from them. This has been incredibly rewarding. We are now working on a new effort, The Warrior Chorus, to be based in four national centers, which will train veterans in the arts and humanities to perform and moderate public programs all over the country.
What inspires this work and empowers the Aquila community?
Public dialogue is essential in a democratic society. This sentiment stays at the heart of American identity. One of the most prominent founders of the United States, John Jay, the first Chief Justice, wrote that knowledge is “the soul of the Republic” and “essential for the duration of liberty” and believed that “more light and knowledge is diffused through the mass of the people in this country, than in any other.” It is from this spirit that Ancient Greeks/Modern Lives and YouStories brings the power of classical works directly to Americans where they live and work and engages them in discussion.
In reality most of us have not been involved in the tasks of serving our country abroad. Only 1% of the American population serve in the military and although a draft is in place it has not been implemented since the Vietnam War. This has led to disengagement with the military community by the greater public and has imparted only a vague sense of the realities and ramifications of war. In our communities, we need an avenue for the society at large to deal responsibly with the issues and problems created in war.
Why do we utilize Classical texts for work with combat veterans?
Greece, in the Classical period, had seen eighty years of war, the Persian wars and the Peloponnesian war and suffered a plague in addition, and so faced severe societal crisis. To cope Greeks turned to what was for them ancient literature: Homer and the myth of oral tradition as source material for Greek drama. Homer reads as a manual for a young warriors embarking on or returning from a journey in war and then re-assimilating into society. Ancient texts address difficulties surrounding war and the way in which society treats it members who return from war. Greek literature is replete with such stories: Agamemnon, Philoctetes, Ajax, Herakles, the Women of Troy, Helen, and, of course, Odysseus to name just a few.
For example, Agamemnon’s decision to sacrifice his daughter in order to be able to go to war can be understood as a mythological manifestation of the tension between loyalty to the personal and duty to the state, something every soldier knows well. Likewise the ethical struggles of Neoptolemus in Philoctetes speak volumes to modern soldiers faced with the moral dilemmas of warfare. The war wounds of Philoctetes, the suicide of Ajax, the madness of Herakles and the long journey home of Odysseus all speak directly to men and women who have served and survived, and who have sacrificed, not without pain and injury.
The tragedians themselves had seen combat, endured war experiences and thus it is not a surprise that these texts wrestle with the most difficult challenges. The VA psychologist, Dr. Jonathan Shay, author of the groundbreaking Achilles in Vietnam and Odysseus in America wrote “Greek drama was written by combat veterans and performed by combat veterans for an audience of combat veterans.” We found that modern combat veterans saw things in these texts that were incredible and often deeply moving.
One veteran working on Heracles, discovered the messenger speech about Heracles’ dead children. He broke up and told us that when serving in Vietnam he had been involved in an airborne firefight. After recovering the bodies of those killed, he found many of them to be children, and described the experience of hearing them crying, even though they were dead. He said “I thought I’d dealt with this” and yet the ancient play dragged up the experience again. This same man, after the incident of finding the children’s bodies, said that he had wanted to kill the officer who ordered the attack. After his experience of the drama and discussion he looked up his former Officer, phoned him and discussed the incident with him. The officer told him more about the circumstances under which he issued the order, and they talked after more than 30 years.
This work can be difficult and has evoked intensely personal moments. War does not fit neatly into categories, something that the vets recognize in ancient literature. Just as Demodocus singing stories of the Trojan War to the disguised Odysseus leads to the revelation of his true identity and, subsequently, his return home, performance or mimesis can, by creating empathy, become a way for the individual to mediate the real experience and help it to become better understood.
Events in New York celebrate YouStories, Veteran Art, and Aquila’s production ‘A Female Philoctetes’
On Veteran’s Day, 2014, Aquila gathered veterans, classicists and public officials to celebrate YouStories. The day began at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, for a tour of the Greek and Roman gallery. Later, at New York University, 16 veteran artists presented their plays, film, photography, poetry, and writing. Professor Kwame Anthony Appiah spoke about the power of community, and this was followed by scenes from Aquila’s “A Female Philoctetes” with its entirely veteran chorus. Aquila has had a special focus on women veterans and their experiences and has been fortunate to work with some incredible women veterans on this initiative.
What can we do to prepare our students for the realities of military careers?
Perhaps as classicists we can use these texts to show our students something about the realities of war. Anyone joining the military should be fully aware of what their role is – to kill the enemy, to dominate a region to control a potentially hostile population, to bring order to chaos. Texts like the Iliad show ask deep questions about how one maintains a sense of morality or ethical conduct in the midst of such carnage. Yet as the writer Chris Hedges has written “War is a force that gives us meaning” and despite Owen’s WWI exhortation that “dulce et decorum est pro patria mori” is a “great lie” the lure of service and the test of combat remain quite intoxicating for many people. Of course in our world, military service is essential and has to be respected, but perhaps society can be more honest about what that service could entail. Might this help in the long run? Perhaps. But at least these works might provide some context, some solace or help to a warrior who needs to know his or her acceptance by and within the community.
How can teachers get involved, especially teachers of ancient history, languages and literature?
Teachers may invite veterans into their classrooms, engage with them, asking them to impart their experiences if they feel comfortable doing so. This helps vets feel valued in our communities: that the experiences that have forever changed them have value and help our knowledge. For a long time the military community was viewed as hostile to the liberal arts and humanities, but, today, veterans are as diverse a population as any in America. With that in mind, ancient Greek and Roman literature can be placed as analogous with works from other cultures. We have hired translators and found it fascinating to engage with the texts of Russian holocaust survivors, Chinese Americans, and Latino Americans.
Good translations are also critically important here. It is important for people to realize that the work of translation continues and remains perennially significant in a multitude of ways and that there is never one single standard translation of an ancient work. Our students can look at various translations of a pertinent text, and explore how the translator behind it is interpreting it given their cultural or historical context. This empowers the audience to respond to literature and interpret meaning on their own.
Also, they can engage with performance. The more drama can be staged, read interpretively, visualized, sung or enjoyed as a performance the more real it becomes. On paper, poetry or literature lacks the experience of simultaneous movement and word. Drama is best staged with actors and articulated as a performance which includes a visual experience beyond that of reading text. This can then inspire further engagement via reading, once the text has been embodied and enacted through performance. When people read these stories out loud to each other, the literature comes alive!
How does Aquila look back to chart its course forward?
Drama at a grass roots level can also bring forth issues that the mainstream media, by necessity motivated by profit, tends to avoid. Just look at how far we have come in the presentation of gay characters and issues in film and TV and how this has greatly impacted legislation in America. This started with Gay Theatre in the 1960’s through 1980’s and break out plays such as Kushner’s “Angels in America” and Tectonic Theater’s “The Laramie Project.”
A movement that starts at the grass roots level can spread and become highly influential. It seems odd to think of classical material as subversive, but it really can be. As the Italian classicist Salvatore Settis has written, the classical can be the mirror that a society sometimes desperately needs to view itself. Since 2001, America has been at war on two fronts. Aquila aims at addressing a most necessary subject of our current public discourse: the ways in which our society treats veterans when they return home from war.
Note: On a scholarly level this work has inspired a book entitled Combat Trauma and the Ancient Greeks edited by Peter Meineck and David Konstan (Palgrave MacMillan, 2014), a special edition of the journal Classical World (Vol.103.2, 2010), and a conference at NYU (2012) Combat Trauma and the Ancient Stage.
