REPORT

you are not alone across time Using Sophocles to treat PTSD By Wyatt Mason

ith its winding young actors, members Wlanes and stands of cher- of an unusual theater ry trees, Camp Zama, a company called Outside U.S. Army base twenty- the Wire, had flown in five miles outside Tokyo, from New York City feels more like a medita- and been delivered tion retreat than a mili- bleary-eyed by Army tary facility. Until it was escort through Tokyo seized by the First Cav- sunset traffic to the base alry in September 1945, late the previous night. Zama was the West Point They had come to per- of the Imperial Japanese form in an on­going Army. Through the de- project called Theater cades, the forest has been of War. First funded by pushed back to accom- the Pentagon in 2009 to modate a larger airstrip, the strategically modest a fire has taken out the tune of $3.7 million, old Japanese barracks, Theater of War has and most of the camp’s staged more than 250 remaining structures shows for 50,000 mili- have been replaced with tary personnel on bases drab buildings set dis- from Guantánamo Bay creetly into the lush to Europe, the Middle green prettiness. One East, and East Asia. In structure from the Impe- front of a full house of rial era remains: a large soldiers on Zama, the theater. Its exterior is actors performed an an- plain but grand; its cavernous interior is When the few Japanese soldiers left at cient Greek play about war’s costs— decorated like a wedding cake, white Zama learned of their country’s surren- Sophocles’ Ajax. In Zama’s audience with yellow piping. The charm of the der, some drew swords, cried, “Long live were many soldiers who had seen building is difficult to reconcile with the emperor!” and stabbed one another combat in Iraq and Afghanistan on what happened outside its walls, in 1945. to death or committed hara-kiri. multiple deployments; many were still Early one clear morning in Septem- dealing with battle trauma and post- Wyatt Mason is a contributing editor of Harper’s Magazine. He teaches at Bard ber 2012, this former Imperial theater traumatic stress. The play that would College and, through the Bard Prison Initia- was again filled with anguished cries, unfold before them tells of a soldier’s tive, at Eastern Correctional Facility. though there was no violence. Five march toward madness and suicide—a

Illustrations by Hadley Hooper REPORT 57 warrior falling onto his own sword. The audience understood the connec- tion implicitly. Suicides by U.S. sol- diers are at unprecedented levels: nearly one a day among active-duty personnel and one an hour among veterans—some 8,000 last year. As Zama’s base commander, Colonel Viv- ian T. Hutson, told the crowd that spilled onto the theater floor, the play would address how “eleven years of continuous war” had left a legacy of “stress, sacrifice, and separation” on the nation’s soldiers. Despite Colonel Hutson’s assur- ances that what would follow would be “gripping, emotional, and very ef- fective,” the soldiers on hand were not a vision of precurtain excitement. Some were already dozing; a few to- ward the rear quietly snored. The Army’s weird, soon-to-be-phased-out pixilated camo blurred the room into one great body. As several soldiers had told me when we’d walked in, they’d been “voluntold” to attend this latest “stand-down”—a day when military business on bases around the world is halted to allow for presentations on hot-button topics: alcoholism, sexual health, suicide. Despite the novelty of the subject, the soldiers knew what they were in for: another well- intentioned but ham-handed attempt by the Army to edutain them on an issue getting bad civilian PR. Given what I’d witnessed earlier in the year, their collective pessimism was reason- able. I’d visited Marine Corps head- quarters in Quantico, Virginia, during an alcohol stand-down, where, before the Outside the Wire performance ly. It was more like they’d been ther race toward it to help or run began, 2,000 Marines sat through a chained to their chairs and were do- away from it to hide. ­PowerPoint slide show that had all the ing everything in their power to es- “Wretched!” she screamed. “I am charm of an infomercial. cape using words alone. Lines flew wretched! Everything is lost.” At Zama, it became rapidly clear back and forth with mounting speed, We were at the point in the play that ancient Greek tragedy made for each seeming to drive the next to a where Ajax has killed himself, and an improvement on bullet-pointed moment of greater desperation. From his concubine, Tecmessa, has just lists. Although the five actors sat side where I stood off to the side, I could found out. The hall of soldiers by side at a table in front of the stage see soldiers’ faces registering the seemed to register each of her words in their street clothes throughout the strangeness of this sudden tumult. I like a blow. performance—and although the felt it, too. The actors’ voices and One of the most celebrated Greek “performance” turned out to be a their language seemed large, urgent. fighters of the Trojan War, Ajax was table-read from bindered scripts—as When the actor who occupied the nicknamed the Shield. No enemy soon as the actors began to deliver table’s central spot—the lone woman could get past him. But after nine their lines, the energy in the room among them, her long blond hair re- years of active-duty combat on for- changed. Sleeping soldiers awoke. gally braided—began to scream at eign soil, he’d lost his mind. Playing Others smiled unself-consciously. the top of her lungs, the noise she a soldier who had been in Ajax’s bat- The actors—four men and one made wasn’t theatrical. If you were to talion, one of the heretofore silent woman—weren’t reading, not exact- hear it on the street, you would ei- actors began to speak. You could see

58 HARPER’S MAGAZINE / OCTOBER 2014 whole rows of soldiers leaning for- in uncommon places. (Vintage will 1940s movie star, Elliot said things ward now, elbows on knees, chins on publish Doer­ries’s translations of had gotten “real raw over there.” He balled fists. Sophocles and Aeschylus next year spoke of his wife of seventeen years, “He has killed us with his death,” as All That You’ve Seen Here Is God.) their two children, and the anger he the man shouted, face reddening with “The ways we had been addressing began exhibiting once he had come feeling, the enormous room silent as post-traumatic stress disorder weren’t back home. Small things made him he paused. “Where is he? Where is working,” Brigadier General Loree crazy—a trash can that had been unbending Ajax whose name is now a K. Sutton told me after an Outside the moved from where it was before he sad song?” Wire performance in New York City. deployed. As he spoke, the fingers of The actors weren’t famous. They’d Sutton, who served in Iraq during the his right hand fiddled with his wed- been on Broadway, in the odd com- first Gulf War and was the highest- ding ring, spinning it as if trying to mercial, in a guest spot on Law & ranking psychiatrist in the Army at keep it screwed on. Order. None had served in the military, the time of her retirement, in 2010, “I lost combat friends,” he told me, but each was channeling grief and rage was responsible for first bringing Doer- “friends returning from combat and loss that seemed pure. Certainly, ries onto U.S. military bases. “Rather who’ve committed suicide. Most the actors were capitalizing on the way than trying to build out an additional people don’t realize that those the setting affected the material. And layer of command bureaucracy,” she wounds don’t heal in a year. A friend whoever cast them had a good eye and said, “we were trying to reach out to who was four years out stumbled. ear. But perhaps most unusual of all was the wider world and integrate what it Couldn’t get his feet back under the language in which they were deliv- knew and what we knew. We’d learned him.” A pause. “I’m combat wound- ering this ancient play: contemporary that we could do everything right in ed. I refused to say something was without being casual, emotional but conventional domains of recovery— wrong with me. I wanted to see a not melodramatic. training, education, medication—and scar. I wanted to see an X-ray. I didn’t Both the casting and the transla- newer modalities—yoga, meditation, want to believe that I, as a person, tion of the text were the work of Eastern approaches—and even make was wounded.” Bryan Doerries, Outside the Wire’s use of artificial intelligence from the I asked him what had changed. thirty-eight-year-old cofounder and Defense Advanced Research Projects He told me it was seeing Ajax artistic director. Doerries was one of Agency. But beyond explicitly thera- last year. “The first thirty days after the five actors at the table in the peutic approaches, we knew another that performance . . . it hurt. I just Imperial theater that day; he tends vital role would be that of culture and wasn’t right. Whatever that was . . . to perform with his troupe but gives the arts.” catharsis. . . . People don’t under- himself the fewest lines and sits at After the show on Zama, Doerries stand. The Army uses the term ‘re- the table’s end. During the dozens of walked me through the crowd that silience’: we bounce back . . .” performances by his company I’ve came to the front to talk to him and He spun his ring. attended over the past two years, the other actors. Doerries took the “. . . but even a ball, if you throw it, Doerries has done as he did at Zama: hands of soldiers, listening intently doesn’t bounce back all the way. I as his actors went back and forth in to their stories. A retired lieutenant wasn’t the same guy. It was acknowl- rapid-fire dialogue, he rocked with with deeply bagged eyes and a black edging that I wasn’t right. Looking manic energy in his seat. He chimed bristle of mustache was brought to in the mirror and realiz- in now and then with one little part the performance that day by his wife, ing: That’s me?” or another (the actors typically play an active-duty colonel. Since he’d multiple roles), almost always step- gotten back from his tours in Af- n the spring of 2013, Theater of ping on the end of another actor’s ghanistan, he had refused to get the IWar went to a shelter for homeless line—a deliberate tactic, a nip at the help his wife said he needed. But he veterans in Queens for its 200th per- heels of the speaker. It had the effect confessed he’d broken down while formance. “The thing that most peo- of increasing the pace of all the ac- watching Ajax unfold. ple don’t know,” Doerries told me tors, a way of directing them from “Because of you guys,” he told there, “is that Sophocles, this great inside the performance. each of the actors afterward in an artist, wasn’t only one of Athens’s Part professor, part carnival bark- improbably explicit but nonetheless most important dramatists. He was er, Doerries is a tireless evangelist for persuasive moment of frankness, also a general in the Greek army. He the Greeks and the gains that trage- “I’m going to seek help. I’ve been in was a soldier writing about soldiers for dy can provide to a community in denial for three years.” an audience that consisted almost pain. He studied Latin and Greek as Doerries also introduced me to entirely of soldiers.” an under­graduate, and since college Master Sergeant Chris Elliot, a Delta I looked out at the ragged assembly of he has been retranslating—in his Force special-ops satellite engineer veterans settling in on folding chairs spare time and initially only for he had met the year before. Elliot beneath the fluorescent glow of the shel- himself—plays from the Greek can- had spent forty-two months in Iraq ter’s multipurpose room. The plays of on as well as Latin plays by Seneca, and Afghanistan over the course of Sophocles were originally performed at tuning their language for modern eight deployments. Heavyset with a the Theater of Dionysus in Athens. performances that have found fans boyish face and the slicked hair of a During Sophocles’ lifetime the theater

REPORT 59 had room for about 6,000 people; later fering that gets hidden from sight,” bility of meaningful change for hu- it was expanded to hold 17,000, roughly Kaufman told me. They have piloted man beings.” half the city’s male citizens. Because programs in maximum-security pris- When Doerries was eight, a col- military service was compulsory, all au- ons, homeless shelters, and hospitals. league of his father’s from the commu- dience members would have been either A project called End of Life, featuring nity college, a German theater director active-duty or retired soldiers. Here in Philoctetes as well as Sophocles’ Women (who, in Doerries’s imitation, is some- Queens, though, as Doerries shuttled of Trachis, has been performed for doc- where between Erich von Stroheim and about on the linoleum, greeting various tors at Harvard Medical School, the Gene Wilder, prone to ejaculations of city officials in attendance, expressing Mayo Clinic, and various children’s “Now vee are cookink!”), needed to his gratitude to the shelter’s director, I hospitals. Another project, called Pro- cast a few children in a production of thought about other bits of information metheus in Prison, presents readings of Euripides’ Medea. Doerries recalled he’d been feeding me over the past few Aeschylus’ Prometheus Bound to audi- with relish the line he got to deliver as months. The best seats in the amphithe- ences of corrections officers, parole of- one of Medea’s sons, screaming it from ater in Athens, down in the front, would ficers, social workers, and wardens. offstage (“No, no, the sword is falling! have been reserved for generals in com- Some of their projects are now based Ahhhhhh!”) as he and his brother were mand at the time. Only seven of what around more contemporary texts— murdered by their mother. are understood to have been more than among them Eugene O’Neill’s Long At Kenyon College, he found a men- one hundred of Sophocles’ plays have Day’s Journey into Night (performed by tor in a retired religion professor named come down to us intact, and two of Dianne Wiest for an audience of 800 Eugen Kullmann. Doerries had been those—Ajax and Philoctetes—are explic- psychiatrists) and Conor ­McPherson’s thriving in an intensive-Greek semi- itly about soldiers who, after years of one-man Rum and Vodka (with Adam nar, a class that met five days a week at combat, suffer grievous wounds that are Driver of Girls as the alcoholic who eight a.m., taught by William not necessarily visible or easily under- has lost everything)—but most of the ­McCulloh. Now he wanted to learn stood. Doerries also stages Philoctetes for plays are from Greece and Rome, in biblical Hebrew so he could read the soldiers and veterans, rotating it in and Doerries’s translations. The purpose of Old Testament. Kullmann was said to out of performance. “It’s about a much- each project is the same: to reach com- know more than twenty languages and decorated warrior,” Doerries said, “who’s munities where intense feelings have was a friend of Hermann Hesse’s. After abandoned for nine years on a desolate been suppressed, in hopes of bringing some initial resistance, Kullmann took island by his own troops after contract- people closer to articu- Doerries on as an independent student. ing a mysterious illness from a ‘wound lating their suffering. Doerries learned Latin, Hebrew, Greek, that never heals.’ ” and German. Philoctetes was performed that day oerries grew up in Newport “What is the secret to the education at the shelter with Reg E. Cathey News,D Virginia. He describes it as a of the human being, Dr. Bryan?” Doer- (perhaps best known for his turn in working-class shipyard town surround- ries recalled Kullmann saying, imitat- The Wire as factotum to Mayor Tom- ed on all sides by the military. His par- ing his midcentury German accent. my Carcetti) in the title role. He ents were carpetbaggers from the “To give the human being that one spent much of the play screaming, north, psychologists. His mother little letter, the letter ‘e’ to make the his deep voice beating at the walls of worked in the practical end of the human ‘humane.’ ” the small space like a bird wanting a field, counseling students with special Doerries’s senior thesis was a perfor- window. Later Doer­ries speculated needs at an elementary school and a mance of Euripides’ Bacchae based on on what the play might have looked high school and keeping a private his own translation. “Bryan put on the like in the Theater of Dionysus: practice. His father was an experimen- finest performance that I have ever seen “Imagine that. Half a city showing tal psychologist and a follower of the of any ancient Greek drama,” McCulloh up to listen to a soldier scream in behaviorist B. F. Skinner. told me by phone. “It was absolutely pain.” Performances of the play can “We were never punished,” Doer- spectacular. It was on a hillside near the run as long as two hours; Doerries’s ries, who has a younger brother who campus and in the forties every night. version at the shelter was condensed teaches music at Notre Dame, told Bryan had blankets and coffee for every- to thirty minutes. Cathey, no more me. “We were always positively re­ one who attended. Three nights. Full than a few yards from anyone in the inforced. My parents never hit us. I crowd every night. I attended all three room, was in such palpable agony I don’t think I was ever grounded. because it was so spectacular. Bryan’s felt myself squirm, and guys in the They believed that there’s nothing own translation. It was accurate. But he back who’d been mumbling to one more powerful than approval.” adapted it for maximum effectiveness.” another were silenced by his screams. That approval was matched with a Doerries’s facility with transla- Doerries founded what became steadfast pessimism about human na- tion is matched by an understand- Outside the Wire in 2009 with the ture. “One of my father’s theories ing of the pressures that perfor- lawyer and producer Phyllis Kaufman. that he took to the grave,” Doerries mance places on a text. Consider Kaufman has helped Doer­ries expand said, “that he would constantly brow- Tecmessa’s scream. The line has the company’s reach beyond the mili- beat me about, invoking the Greeks been translated variously as “Ah, tary. “We believe that these plays can and fate, was that, from his behav- me, ah, me!” “No! No!” and as the help communities open up about suf- iorist perspective, there was no possi- stage direction “Off: short, sharp

60 HARPER’S MAGAZINE / OCTOBER 2014 scream.” In Doerries’s text, we read let as she asked a friend if she’d seen Turning a stage direction as well: “An inhu- Jesse yet. Behind her, one of two man cry.” teens in matching T-shirts—the “The act of translation extends well commodore players ‘break a leg!’ Toward past the page and into performance,” not literally!—hadn’t seen him ei- Doerries told me. “I see no difference ther . . . except in Zombie­land, ha-ha, between director and translator, for it’s which was awesome! in the staging of Tecmessa’s cry—the As the auditorium began to fill, Home timing, intensity, duration, and pitch of the actors took their seats at two the scream itself—that that translation banquet tables set end to end near REFLECTIONS occurs. When I work with an actress on the front of the stage. The kids who’d this moment, I usually encourage her been abuzz outside filed into the front ON THE FAMILY to surprise herself and the audience rows, murmuring and giggling, while FROM HARPER'S with the scream. I give her permission families gathered at the rear. A repre- to sound horrifyingly ugly. And I chal- sentative from Operation UNITE MAGAZINE lenge her to make the audience wish (Unlawful Narcotics Investigations, they never came. The result, if the ac- Treatment, and Education), one of Some of our most loving—and tress is on her game, is a sound that the regional sponsors of the event, re- most difficult—relationships are travels straight from the lower depths lated some statistics: although the of her throat directly into the audience United States was 3 percent of the with our parents, children, member’s amygdala.” world population, we consumed siblings, and extended families. At the end of his time at Kenyon, 97 percent of all hydrocodone; Doerries was put forward as the school’s eighty-two Kentuckians died of over- These complicated relationships candidate for a Rhodes Scholarship. He doses every month; and over the first are the foundation of our society didn’t receive it. In retrospect, he has a ninety days of 2012, five people a day sense why. The essay he wrote for it were treated in Kentucky for opioid- and our lives: they define our described his ambition to bring the related overdoses. Then Doerries past, give us hope for the future, classics to working-class people. picked up a wireless mic, fumbled “It’s like saying, ‘I want to bring with it momentarily, and, pacing the teach us to get along with art to the proletariat!’ ” Doerries said, stage, began to speak. others, and, often, provide with a Russian accent. “It wasn’t He has done some version of well-formulated.” Doerries paused, the introduction that followed more excellent examples of how not to serious now. than 300 times in the past five years. behave. The moving essays in “I think at that time it was about Of the actors who were there that day, entitlement. I still think that it’s Driver, who was a Marine before he Turning Toward Home, all of about entitlement. Whose stories went to Juilliard, had seen Doerries in which were originally published are these? To whom do this mode the most, having performed they belong?” with the company since 2008. “The in Harper’s Magazine, gracefully biggest change I’ve seen in Bryan dur- explore these dynamics. Authors ix months before traveling to ing all this time,” Driver told me, “is SJapan with Doerries, I met up with that he’s more comfortable with the include David Mamet, Donna him and Kaufman in Hazard, Ken- speech at the beginning. He’s done it Tartt, Richard Ford, Sallie tucky, as they debuted a new project. so many times, and he’s figured out Pill mills—where unscrupulous doc- how to address the audience without Tisdale, Louise Erdrich, and tors write prescriptions for drugs like condescension. He’s not some guy many more. Introduction by oxycodone or hydrocodone—have coming from New York to a commu- proliferated in Kentucky, and the nity to tell them what it’s like in the Verlyn Klinkenborg. number of drug-overdose deaths in military or whatever. He’s so good at the state has quadrupled since 1999. keeping in contact with everyone, at Order today through Doerries chose Bacchae as his text. starting the conversation.” store.harpers.org The crowd that had gathered out- “There’s just one more thing you need side the Perry County Public Library to know,” Doerries said several times Published by Franklin Square Press auditorium (capacity: 200) seemed with a smile, feeding the crowd just ISBN 1-879957-08-6 most excited about the prospect of enough information about the historical Softcover $14.95 seeing Jesse Eisenberg, who was act- and dramatic context for the play. Bac- F RANKLIN ing alongside Adam Driver, Kath- chae tells the story of the coming of SQUARE leen Chalfant, and Peter Francis Dionysus, the god of wine and intoxica- PRESS James. A girl with wavy auburn hair tion, to Greece. When Dionysus arrives wearing cutoff jeans rolled to mid- in the city of Thebes, he liberates the thigh fiddled with her charm brace- people from their homes, sending the Distributed through Midpoint Trade Books

REPORT 61 citizens—including the king’s mother— contexts that generate interesting dis- Phil Donahue.” He’s using the famil- dancing and drinking into the hills. The cussions,” Eisenberg told me later, iar to deliver an experience that has young king, Pentheus, tries to subdue “but I actually mainly enjoy the act- become alien: the collective witness the revelry and restore order to his city, ing part of it—the emotional and in- of suffering fashioned by an artist to waging war against the god. tellectual experience provided by unite a community in need. Over the next forty-five minutes, these situations and characters. I “If we had one message to deliver to the actors sprinted through their think the more emotionally revealing you,” Doerries said before bringing the lines, Doerries jabbing them along. we are onstage, the more comfortable evening to a close, releasing Eisenberg He wants urgency in the delivery, for the audience is in participating in to sign autographs and chat with his the exchanges of dialogue to feel not personal and sensitive discussions, in fans, “if you’ve been in the position like tennis, he says, but ping-pong. revealing themselves afterward.” where you felt alone in this problem, No props, no scenery, no costumes, Outside the Wire’s projects always you felt like you alone were facing it by no stagecraft of any kind. And al- unfold in three parts—performance, yourself, then we have a message to de- though I appreciate that you’ll need panel, and conversation—and as the liver to you from Euripides. As the to take this on faith, none of those play ended, the panelists took the translator of this play—God knows I’ve absences were felt in that room. stage. Along with Doerries, there taken enough liberties with his words Eisenberg and Driver tore through was a Hazard circuit-court judge, an tonight—it’s this: You’re not alone in their lines with pugilistic intensity. educator, a former drug dealer this room, as evidenced by this amaz- Eisenberg played Pentheus, bouncing turned youth pastor, and a clinical ing conversation, this bearing witness. up out of his seat and unspooling his pharmacist from nearby Pikeville You’re not alone across this country lines in an I’m-much-smarter-than- Medical Center. and the world, for we’re going to take you patter. Driver as Dionysus took Referring to Agave’s intoxicated this Dionysus Project all over the on a fey lasciviousness that—given murder of her son, the pharmacist world, and what you’ve told us tonight that Driver looks like he could kill said, “I see that every single day. will come with us. And as powerful as Eisenberg with one punch—seemed The babies in the NICU .­ . . it’s so the Internet is, the experience of two like a lewd threat. sad. Probably fifty percent are suf- hundred people in a room spending fering withdrawals.” two hours together is a different way to pentheus: Do you dance at night or in The youth pastor addressed the combat isolation. Most importantly, if the light of day? audience directly. “How many of we had one message to deliver to you, dionysus: At night, mostly. Darkness you have lost a close friend or fam- two thousand four hundred years holds the most majesty. ily member to drugs?” A third of later, it’s simply this: You pentheus: Darkness is dangerous, and rotten for women. the hands rose. “Now, how many are not alone across time.” dionysus: You can find scandal in broad of you know somebody who’s died daylight, if it’s what you’re looking for. of drugs?” Everyone. oerries ends every performance During part three of the evening— withD that line. After the alcohol- Audience laughter, nervous and ea- the conversation—the girl I’d seen awareness stand-down in Virginia, one ger, punctuated every delivery. The out front with the charm bracelet of the panelists, a staff sergeant, spoke scandalous plot unfolded: Dionysian raised her hand and began speaking frankly to his fellow jarheads about his drunkenness becomes general all over in a high, quavering voice. alcoholism and his wife’s suicide at- the kingdom and claims even Pen- “I have parents who have been on tempt while he was deployed. After- theus’ mother, Agave. In her delusion- drugs and who have set a horrible ward, Richard P. Mills, a towering al, revelrous state, she and her fellow example for my family, and my older three-star general in the audience, celebrants mistake her son for a lion, brother has done the same thing, walked over to the staff sergeant, took and Agave tears him apart with her and I’m trying to set an example for his hand, punched him on the shoul- bare hands. It’s Agave’s father, Cad- him, but it’s so hard and . . .” She be- der, told him he’d done a good job, and mus, happening upon his drunken gan to cry. “I decided I want to be thanked him for his candor—candor child, who awakens her to the reality there for him and say: ‘Hey, I’m gon- that once would have ended careers, of what she has done: she has decapi- na help you struggle—since they the general told me later. “In the old tated Pentheus and taken his head in don’t.’ I’m more adult than my par- days,” Mills said, “the feeling was, her lap, believing it a great prize. Play- ents. They come to me for advice. I ‘You’re a Marine—suck it up. You don’t ing the moment when Agave comes try to send them in the right way, have problems. . . .’ We won’t let that to, Chalfant shed real tears and re- but they want money from me, and happen again. We’re going to take care leased a terrible scream—yet another I’m trying so hard but . . .” As she of these problems: let a Marine recover “inhuman cry”—into the small, silent sobbed, two rows of kids’ arms fell and move forward in the Corps.” room. It came as a relief to recall, as around her in an embrace. At the Pentagon, Lieutenant Col- the sound subsided, that what I was If any of this sounds like something onel Cathy Wilkinson explained watching was make-believe. you might have seen on Oprah, the that these changes in attitude aren’t “I’d like to say that I primarily en- comparison isn’t unfair. For his part, cosmetic. In prior decades, the mili- joy performing these plays because Doerries tells his audiences he’ll be tary’s security background question- they are done in socially substantive roaming the rows with a mic “like naire asked soldiers if they had ever

62 HARPER’S MAGAZINE / OCTOBER 2014 Philoctetes to 400 Marines and their spouses at a military conference in San Diego. “I jumped at the opportunity, and what happened when I finally found the right audience for these plays rearranged my molecules.” Doerries’s projects gained the sup- port of high-ranking military offi- cials, notably General Sutton. With her assistance, he was booked for a hundred performances on bases around the world in 2009 and 2010. But then changes in military post- ings, including Sutton’s retirement, led to the expiration of his Pentagon contract at the end of its first year: other leaders, other ideas. A scram- ble began, for both new funds and new audiences. The performances that now take place on military bas- es are paid for through various base commanders’ discretionary funds or through onetime grants. Even so, bringing his work to a nonmilitary audience has become, in part, a mat- ter of necessity: without an umbrella contract from the Pentagon, Doer- ries has been partnering with private funding sources and organizations al- ready seeking to reach at-risk groups. “The key,” Doerries told me, “lies in identifying a population struggling with a particular issue—chronic ill- ness, addiction, the aftermath of a natural disaster—and then finding a play or text that will connect with its core values and, in turn, bring people together in powerful, unpredictable ways. When a tragedy works, it’s like an external hard drive. You plug it into an audience and they received psychological counseling. Doerries began his partnership know what to do.” At the time, many were afraid their with the military in 2008, after he answers could be used as grounds for read a New York Times article about arly one morning in May 2012, discharge; indeed, the question was veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan who inE a beige-on-beige conference room on probably there to filter out the men- were charged with murder after re- the ground floor of the Joplin, Missouri, tally unstable. Now it comes with a turning from their deployments. Of Hilton Garden Inn, I was part of an disclaimer making clear that a ser- 121 cases, three quarters involved ser- audience of three for a rehearsal of an vice member’s responses would not vice members who were still serving adaptation of the Book of Job. To my be held against him. I wondered who when the murders took place. right, at one end of an oval table, was was responsible for the change. The article quoted Captain William George Lombardi, a man you wouldn’t “Senior leaders began stepping P. Nash, a combat- and operational- have a hard time believing is director forward,” Wilkinson told me. “They stress-control coordinator for the Ma- of corrections for the state of Missouri, spoke publicly about having sought rines, who was telling Stateside care­ and Christine Bertelson, who worked help, about how treatment works. givers that, if they wanted to understand for the governor. At the other end of They worked to get that message their new, ex-military patients, they the table, near Doerries, sat three ac- across.” Carter Ham, for one, a four- needed to read Ajax. tors: Arliss Howard, who played Red star general who led operations in Doerries tracked Nash down. Within Sox owner John W. Henry in Money- Libya, has spoken openly about his a few weeks, Nash had invited Doerries ball; David Strathairn, best known as struggles with ­PTSD. to present his translations of Ajax and Edward R. Murrow in Good Night, and

REPORT 63 Good Luck; and Paul Giamatti, who of Job, you know? It’s not worth being ing refuge facedown in his bathtub was screaming at the top of his lungs. precious or decorous. This is urgent while the building was torn away “Don’t you have any sense?” Gia- stuff. It feels useful too.” around him. The bathtub and the matti, as Job, exclaimed. Veins “When an actor like Giamatti,” Do- remains of the building were long branched across his right temple as his erries told me later, “pushes the per- gone, but as we drove up, Father face went embolismically red. “Will you formance to its outer limits, blurring Monaghan was standing at the edge never shut your mouths?” Pause. “Listen the boundaries between performed of what had been the church parking now to my arguments; hear out my ac- pain and experienced suffering, the lot as if he’d never abandoned his cusations. Be quiet now—let me speak.” audience—all of sudden—has some- post. He was being interviewed by a He brandished a fist. “Whatever hap- thing in common, an experience of television reporter for a piece mark- pens will happen. He may kill me, but profound discomfort which serves as a ing the anniversary of the storm. Be- I won’t stop; I will speak the truth to bridge to discovering other shared ex- hind him, at the very top of the swell, his face.” Pounding fist to chest: “Pay periences, thoughts, and values.” Doerries, Strathairn, and Howard attention to what I say!” The shared experience in question roamed the emptiness. Giamatti was The text that Giamatti and the had happened a year earlier, to the pacing some distance away, hands others would perform twice that day— day: Joplin had suffered the worst tor- clasped behind his back. first in a megachurch, then in a high nado strike in the United States in A few hours later, the actors per- school auditorium—was drawn from more than half a century. In about formed the Old Testament story of Stephen Mitchell’s verse translation of thirty minutes, along a six-mile path, incomprehensible loss for several hun- the Bible book. In the few minutes it had erased everything, destroying dred people at College Heights Chris- they had had to look at the script to- the hospital, killing 158 people, in- tian Church. Strathairn, with his gether before this first timed run- juring nearly a thousand, leveling white beard and grave solemnity, con- through at full volume, Giamatti had thousands of homes. Lombardi had jured an awesome creator, one who, transformed from his exceedingly po- visited Joplin and called Doerries the once Giamatti exploded, lowered the lite public persona to something very day he got back home. boom, impressing on Job his minute- scary. Mouths had progressively fallen “I said to Bryan, ‘You’ve got to do ness, his ignorance, his ingratitude, his open as he spoke. At one point, there something here,’ ” Lombardi told me error. By the end, Giamatti was in real was even a high, brief, strange blurt of outside the rehearsal room. “I told him, tears, as would be some of the panelists laughter from Howard. (I hadn’t heard ‘Those people are going to need you.’ ” from the community, as would be a laugh like that since eighth grade, Lombardi met Doerries in 2009 some of the congregation’s members. when we were all brought into the when Outside the Wire came to one of When Doerries posed his latest ver- music room and told that Joanna Muf- his facilities to do the Prometheus in sion of his perennial first questions son, a classmate who had leukemia, Prison project. Correctional-staff mo- (“Why do you think the author of Job had passed away, whereupon Alex rale, he explained, was always difficult wrote it? What do you think he was Berne blurted that same laugh.) It was to maintain: guards are paid low wages, trying to say? What was he trying to the sound of a body unable to restrain face hostile environments, and have an accomplish? What was he up to?”) an its recognition of something too big to ugly public profile—movies tend to odd charge filled the church air. contain, too formless to articulate. A paint them as dim-witted sadists. Lom- “I personally believe the author was true human sound, complete in its bardi was impressed by the project and God,” a woman stood and said. “And ugliness, ugly in its truthfulness. One had hoped to get it funded through the hearing it today, I decided that your that typically would take news of a state so that it could go forward and question, of what God wanted, was for death to produce. reach his 11,000 employees, but that us to realize that though we live in a “These are certainly the most grat- never happened. When the tornado really burdened world . . . He’s still ifying experiences I have had,” Gia- hit, he saw another arena in which there, He’s always there. That was the matti told me of his work with Out- Doerries’s work could be of use. author’s intent: to convince us that side the Wire. “I can’t even think of After rehearsal, Doerries, Lom- He’s really right here.” them as jobs or gigs. To begin with, bardi, and the actors drove across “I think that Job’s friends sucked,” the material being presented is ex- town to College Heights Christian said another woman, to great laughter traordinary, and it’s a ballbuster to do, Church. A broad, empty corridor, a from the stadium seats. As the Book and when presented in context, the crude void, cut through the flat of Job unfolds, after Job’s losses, his energy that is generated in those greenness on either side of the road. friends sit with him for seven days in rooms with those amazing people is Along the way, we stopped at what silence. But then they start to talk, explosive. It’s a pure experience for used to be St. Mary’s Catholic and to a one begin to tell him that, the actors. It is for me at least: Church. A great iron cross some well, it must be all his fault, he must stripped down, just words and the twenty feet tall stood on a hill, all be a sinner: Job must have done some- gigantic emotions they convey. And that was left of a church that had thing wrong. I love that Bryan does not remotely been there for a century. St. Mary’s “It’s blaming the victim,” she con- shy away from the size of the emo- seventy-one-year-old priest, Father tinued. “There was a group a year ago tions. In fact he encourages us to be Justin Monaghan, had been alone in that came to Joplin to say we must as big as these texts are: it’s the Book the rectory when the storm hit, tak- have been evil, needed to be wiped

64 HARPER’S MAGAZINE / OCTOBER 2014 out. But you know what? God gave us nesses of tragedy, connecting stored how tired the world seemed to be of each other, to accept each other, to emotion with the memory of the stories of loss. care for each other. And maybe if event that brought it about. Not “Most traumas you go through those friends of Job’s had kept their diminution through repetition, trag- alone,” he said. “We’ve been very for- mouths shut for more than seven edy is deliverance through intensifi- tunate to have each other . . . When days, things would have been fine.” cation. It performs a magic act—the you tell your Sandy story, someone, One woman spoke directly to release of seized emotion—by giving rather than saying, ‘Yeah, I’ve heard Doe­rries: “If you haven’t noticed, Jo- suffering a form. it,’ goes: ‘I understand. Now here’s plin is a town of churches. We have “Tragedy,” Doerries told me on my story.’ ” two Bible colleges and hundreds of another occasion, “fills us with a A woman offered an epic of her churches. Job’s friends who ‘sucked,’ sense of urgency that if we don’t act attempts to save her twenty-five- as the other lady said, were the reli- immediately we’re going to be by- pound cat as her home flooded and gious people. I think the real story of standers to our own destruction. her neighborhood collapsed around Joplin is that the church stopped be- The stakes are that high, and that’s her in the dark and the dawn. Surg- ing religious when the tornado hit— the only way to break through the es of feeling rose in the room as she and became the church.” neurological, almost impenetrable spoke. As more stories were told, it Applause. armor of habitualized bad decisions. became clear that many of the “And that’s the hope for the whole William James said that ‘in most of members of the audience knew one world,” she went on. “When we stop us, by the age of thirty, the charac- another, each storyteller standing being religious, and we start being ter has set like plaster, and will nev- up and saying, “Well, what Leslie the church, and we start letting peo- er soften again.’ So it requires a just said pretty much covers it, ple speak their pain in an honest shock to break through the hard- but . . .” or “I want to just add to fashion, and we don’t try to give ened neurology of the pathways of what Rick said”: a large room, full of them our wisdom—which is nothing our decisions over time. It requires a first names. but a bunch of poop anyway—” shock of discomfort that affects us Joshua Ellis, a reverend with the Roars. physically and emotional- Disaster Chaplaincy Services, which “—and we just are with them. It ly and spiritually.” is often deployed by the Red Cross didn’t say it in the script, but it does during such upheavals, explained say in Job that when his friends were ighteen months later, Doer- that “it’s very hard to constantly lis- just with him and were silent for sev- riesE was in the Rockaways, in ten and not say something. The mi- en days he was comforted by them, Queens, on the one-year anniversa- raculous thing about chaplaincy as I and it wasn’t until they opened their ry of Hurricane Sandy. Traffic have experienced it is that more mouths . . .” Laughter filled the through Manhattan and Brooklyn than once I have stayed absolutely si- church. “And that’s what this com- had been thick until the Belt Park- lent as someone just keeps talking munity did. I really wish that a major way, and thickly developed urban- and talking and talking . . . and then newspaper or TV station would tell ness thinned within minutes to at a certain point they say: ‘Thank that story. Would tell the story of the sparsely developed ruralness. Or so you for the words that you’ve said: churches during the tornado, be- it seemed. Many of the voids one they really helped.’ ” Doerries stood cause we came together and people can see today had been houses. This at the front of the space, his mic just got down on their hands and part of the coast had been overcome tucked under an arm, his focus fully knees and served.” by storm surges that were roof-high. on Ellis. “So maybe I’m reading too It reminded me of what Doer­ries Neighborhoods had been erased. So much into it,” Ellis said, “but at the had told me about his father, whose Doerries was performing Job again, end of the piece, when Job is hearing work in psychology had led him to this time with Eric Bogosian as the what God is saying, he’s really just believe that change in human beings lead, Adam Driver as God, and Tate hearing himself. Grace is the fact was simply not possible. Donovan as the narrator. First they that he hears it. Whether you want Doer­ries did not agree. “I think performed at a synagogue that had to call it God or higher power or tragedy is a delivery system,” he’d been flooded, its interior still a con- magic . . . who cares. The message said, “that awakens us to the possi- struction site, floors open and lum- was delivered.” bility for meaningful change.” In the ber piled beside the pews. And then At evening’s end, after Doerries Poetics, Aristotle names the change they performed again, thirty min- had once again asked an audience to “catharsis”: a purification of one’s utes later, at a community theater keep in mind that they were not emotions through vicarious experi- on the beach. Doerries’s time-honed alone across time, he retreated to ence, through drama designed to three-part performance structure the edge of the theater, into the beat the drums of feeling, so that we was unaltered. Bogosian’s Job was shadows. From there he watched as might suffer openly, commonly, more cerebral than Giamatti’s; members of the audience shook communally, and be done with it, Driver’s God was of a different ven- hands, hugged, and—those who for a time. om than Strathairn’s; but it hardly hadn’t known one another to begin These dramas enact the rage and mattered. One middle-aged man with—introduced themselves and sorrow and fear that linger in wit- rose afterward and talked about began to talk. n

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