What Ancient Greek Theater Can Tell Us About War

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In The Nantucket Project meeting room on Mason Street. On the left is Scott Williams, president of The Nantucket Project, and on right, Tom Scott, co-founder of The Nantucket Project. (Anne W. Semmes photo)
In The Nantucket Project meeting room on Mason Street. On the left is Scott Williams, president of The Nantucket Project, and on right, Tom Scott, co-founder of The Nantucket Project. (Anne W. Semmes photo)

By Anne W. Semmes
Sentinel Columnist

In a relaxed white space on Mason Street, a gathering of nearly 50 people from Greenwich and environs were being challenged to confront one of the prominent social issues of our time—how to honor and support the physical and emotional scars of those who have been put in the battlefield to defend our freedom.

The vehicle to put this issue before us was three acted-out scenes from “Philoctetes,” written 2,500 years ago by the Greek playwright Sophocles.

Picture the primary character, a decorated Greek hero heading up an armada of 1,000 ships in the war on Troy, when on the island of Lemnos he is suddenly abandoned after suffering a poisonous snakebite, which afflicted him during the nine-year war of the Greeks against Troy.

In the parlance of today, this is the story of a wounded warrior—with “the wound that never heals.” Playing the part of Philoctetes is Zach Grenier, known for his work in TV’s “The Good Wife.” Along come Odysseus and Diomedes, who’s assigned to return Philoctetes to battling Troy. An oracle has said that only his return will end the war.

The volume of anger, resentment and shame as expressed in the three scenes by the wounded warrior Philoctetes was astonishing to the audience, as it has been similarly received over the last eight years in military bases (including the Pentagon), medical settings and other communities of trauma in this country and abroad.

Reeling a bit from the drama, the crowd in the white space is asked, “So why did Sophocles (who lived until he was 90 and wrote 100 plays, of which only seven survive) write this particular play? What was his objective?”

The questioner is Bryan Doerries, the Brooklyn-based founder of the “Theater of War,” who believes “that ancient Greek tragedies have something urgent to show us about ourselves,” and that they are able to “transcend time, to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.”

So how did the audience—which included a couch full of college kids—respond to what Sophocles had in mind with his play? A woman replies, “It’s about leaving someone behind.” Another said, “Acknowledgment is the beginning of our own healing.” Another: “This is about shared discomfort.” And: “Do you have what it takes?” The three most common responses were, “Acknowledgement,” “It connects us,” “It gives us perspective.”

3 Inside the “War Room” of The Nantucket Project’s Mason Street offices, talent booker Naria Halliwell stays atop of scheduling the lineup for the Nantucket-based “Walls” event Sept. 22-25. (Anne W. Semmes photo)
3 Inside the “War Room” of The Nantucket Project’s Mason Street offices, talent booker Naria Halliwell stays atop of scheduling the lineup for the Nantucket-based “Walls” event Sept. 22-25. (Anne W. Semmes photo)

A panel of three war veterans was present to provide powerful witness. Chief among them was Joe Geraci, a 21-year Army combat vet retired to teach mentors how to assist veterans and their families as they transition back to civilian life, as co-founder of Columbia University’s Teachers College Resilience Center for Veterans & Families.

As Geraci addressed the crowd with, “Less than one percent of the population of America have been to Afghanistan. So how do you relate,” I thought of a Cos Cob VFW, who shared how a family member veteran who had committed suicide might have profited from one of those mentors.

So, what’s this white space all about? We came for free. The host is The Nantucket Project (TNP), the brainchild of cofounder and Greenwich entrepreneur Tom Scott who used to call Nantucket home. (It was there that he cofounded Nantucket Nectars, the juice company.) The TNP headquarters are in this Mason Street building, along with the newly opened white space, where a lot of sensitizing is going on.

 

Tom Scott, who I caught at a busy time, spoke of having created his sensitizing TNP think tank with the Chautauqua educational nonprofit and the Aspen Institute in mind some six years ago. Thus his embrace of Brian Doerrie’s Theater of War. For those who would want to experience a replay of one of Doerrie’s Greek tragedies, they can join the hundreds due to attend the sixth annual TNP “summit” weekend of “telling humanity’s stories” in Nantucket, Sept. 22-25—not exactly free, but offering such luminaries of thought as Deepak Chopra, Norman Lear, and Krista Tippett. The subject of the weekend will be “Walls—the walls within us, the walls between us, and the walls around us.”

But before that, I will have attended another town hall program on another leading social issue: “Connecticut’s Opioid Addiction” in the white space on August 30, featuring those experts equipped to address the opioid and heroin epidemic facing our community—and that unfortunately includes Greenwich.

For more about The Nantucket Project, visit www.nantucketproject.com.

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