This website is dedicated to all the veterans who have so unstintingly shared their stories with the faculty and students of Carthage Theatre, and trusted us with their most personal and sacred memories.

The Creation of A/W

How did we get the idea?

I don't remember exactly how I stumbled upon Sebastian Junger's 2010 documentary Restrepo, but when I watched it in October of 2014, I started to imagine bringing the story to the stage as a live theatrical experience. Junger and cameraman Tim Hetherington had embedded with US Army Airborne soldiers in the Korengal Valley of Afghanistan for nine months. The resulting movie is a harrowing look at what the war is like at ground level, and how it affected those involved. Seeing Restrepo, and reading the companion book, War, made me realize that our national dialogue had largely turned away from the war in Afghanistan; a war that had started with the horrific 9/11 attacks as a strike to eliminate the threat of Al Quaeda. But here we were, 14 years later, with Afghanistan about to become America's longest war, and nobody seemed to even know we were still there. I started playing around with the idea of dramatizing the movie in some way or adapting it into a fictional script.

I wrote a 2-page treatment and presented it to my long-suffering theatre faculty colleagues for perusal. I had also been reading Augusto Boal's famous work Theatre of the Oppressed, and so my initial ideas were also influenced by that. They revolved around some kind of audience participation-type event, immersing the viewers in the atmosphere of the war.

I reached out to Junger to ask about obtaining the rights to adapt his movie/book, but his agent replied they were not available. It's probably for the best, not only because it started me on an incredibly rewarding journey, but also because every snippet of a scene or dialogue I tried to write based on my concept sounded and felt horrible. Ultimately I couldn't see myself being clever enough to come up with a text that would get people to stand up and collaborate in the storytelling, and ultimately get them to think about issues like our ongoing commitment in Afghanistan, or what it was doing our fellow citizens in the military.

Without the Junger material, I was somewhat at a loss as to how to proceed, but I knew that I wanted to tell a story about this in some way. Then, in January 2015 Carthage attended the American College Theatre Festival regional gathering in Milwaukee. One of the participating productions was an original play commissioned by Augustana College about veteran suicide. As we walked out of the theatre that chilly January afternoon, I turned to my colleague, department chair Herschel Kruger, and said: "We've GOT to do something like this!" I was even more convinced that these stories needed to be told.

That's when I started thinking about it as a verbatim play. Instead of me writing some kind of narrative about a subject I was pretty much ignorant on, I would turn to subject matter experts: the people who had actually fought the war. I also realized this was a way I could incorporate community outreach, which had been part of my original idea. I remembered that at an academic senate meeting the previous fall, someone had pointed out that there was a significant number of current students who were Afghanistan veterans. What if I could reach out to people right here on campus and collaborate with them, and tell their stories?

Problem was, I really didn't know anything about verbatim theatre or how to go about making it. But I didn't let that stop me.

Bringing Laurel On Board

Laurel McKenzie was a history major but had extensive theatre experience from her high school, which had a respectable theatre program. She ended up adding a theatre major after her freshman year, I believe. Laurel impressed us all with her positive attitude and seemingly boundless energy. As the department continued to contemplate putting my as-yet unformed show into the 2015 season, I got the idea to bring Laurel on board as a student collaborator through the SURE (Summer Undergraduate Research Program) Grant program. I approached Laurel in April of 2015 with the idea of applying for a SURE Grant to spend the summer interviewing veterans and putting together a play based on their testimony. Her interest in history and affinity for taking on challenges led her ultimately to agree to work with me.

I started researching and reading books related to verbatim theatre--I really had no idea how to go about it. One book in particular, a collection of essays titled Verbatim Verbatim, proved most helpful in framing the types of source material and styles of performance that make up the genre.

"The words of real people are recorded or transcribed by a dramatist during an interview or research process, or are appropriated from existing records...they are then edited, arranged or re-contextualized to form a dramatic presentation, in which actors take on the characters of the real individuals whose words are being used." --Will Hammond, VERBATIM VERBATIM

With a little more information, I now started to feel like maybe we could pull this off. We still didn't have any solid ideas about the structure or the procedure, but I had a firm concept now in mind of what this might look like.

Over the next few months, my ideas gestated further. One important aspect we tackled was how to ensure confidentiality for our participants. This would allow people to speak freely on highly charged topics. We would store all recordings and transcripts securely on Google Drive so that names were never connected to a person's testimony, and all material would then be password-protected.

The primary considerations in the creation of a verbatim piece are to identify what story is to be told, and then how to acquire the dialogue that tells that story. While written sources such as previous interviews, court transcripts, public speeches, etc. can be used, we were using live interviews with veterans. Thus, without their trust and willingness to help, we would have no play. Establishing trust, building rapport, and encouraging stories to flow become the next most important tasks.

One key aspect of building trust is accountability to the participants, and clearly delineated guidelines about the project and what we intended to do. We created a consent form which went over the parameters of the process and how we intended to use the material. Later we would create more sophisticated documents that reflected our growing understanding of informed consent, and I would complete human subject research training through Carthage to learn more about best practices when working with voluntary participants in our projects.

Laurel and I also crafted a mission statement to share with potential interviewees, so that our intentions were made explicit at the outset:

To foster better understanding

between veterans and non-veterans

by providing a voice for unheard stories.

Creating a mission statement not only kept us centered on our task, but also communicated a message to our veteran contributors, who, with their military experiences, are often mission-driven in their mindsets as well.

Casting and Production Planning

By late April we had been approved for the SURE Grant, so Laurel was able stay on campus to work on the play and conduct interviews. Laurel had also agreed to act as stage manager (and tour manager) for our production. We had already decided we wanted the show to be able to tour to different off-campus venues. This meant a minimal set and the need to transport our own lighting rig to different locations. Our production team set to work imagining how we were going to pull that off. We decided to produce the show "in the round," with audience on all four sides of a 16-foot square. The scenery would consist of eight footlockers which would contain most of the props and costumes needed during the show, and which would be constantly rearranged to suggest various locations, vehicles, buildings, furniture, etc.

We held auditions on May 5, before the students went home for the summer, and well before we had any idea how many veterans would interview with us. As it happened we cast eight actors: Austin Nelson, Justice Good, Hayley Sherwood, Dylan Heeter, Dylan Baxter, Meg Keogh, Alexis Gilkes, and Alex Johnson. These brave artists were willing to dive into a project with no characters and no script! Our first rehearsal on May 12 was therefore not a read through, but rather a screening of Restrepo. The film had a profound impact on all, and led to some great discussions, including how we were planning to do this!

We felt strongly that we shouldn't be perceived as profiting from the stories of veterans, so I approached the theatre faculty with the idea that we would donate ticket proceeds to veteran-related charities or service organizations. They agreed this would be a great gesture.

Physical Fitness Training

Before sending everyone home for the summer we agreed to take the Army Physical Fitness Test (A/PFT) and take it again on our return, to see if we could all get into the kind of shape that soldiers are expected to be in. We met with Tarble Athletic Center Director Tyler Prochnow, who put together a training plan for the actors to complete over the coming months (none of us passed the initial PFT test).

Rick Bingen and the Wifi Rifles

About the same time that I recruited Laurel McKenzie, I also began talking to senior Rick Bingen. As a double major in computer science and theatre, he was looking to complete a senior thesis that would tie the two majors together in a creative way. I was hoping we could use some kind of prop weapons for the show, but since we also wanted the audience to be up close to the actors, the weapons would need to be totally safe at close quarters. Blank-firing guns would be too loud, smelly, and potentially very dangerous to the audience. I had an idea: could we use some high-tech method to control a prop (such as a rifle) wirelessly from offstage, to trigger live sound effects (like a gunshot) when the actor pulled the trigger onstage? This would mean there would be none of the problems associated with blank-firing weapons. The idea intrigued Rick and he got to work, without knowing yet that it would be connected to a mainstage production.

Finding Participants

We started our search with a Bridge post in May, calling for any veterans in our campus community to participate. This call for volunteers netted us three people: Army Sniper, Marine Infantry, and Navy Aircraft Mechanic. One of our cast gave us contact information for several veterans from off campus: Air Force Raven, Marine Communications, and Army Ranger. Another student introduced us to the Army EOD husband and Army missile technician wife. The other characters came to us via more circuitous routes, and in a few cases we didn't even know where someone had heard about us: Army Intel, Air Force Photographer, Navy Chaplain, and Army medical patient specialist. Ultimately we worked with 12 participants, leading to the necessary adjustment to have only eight actors portray them.

Interviews and Structure: the "Folder Method"

Our interviews were conducted from June into August. Some were in person, some over the phone, all recorded on a small digital recorder. I created an overall structure where we would ask people about their military experiences from their decision to join all the way to today. We created a battery of standard questions to guide our interviewees through a chronological (more or less) account of their service. Since each person was being asked the same key questions, we then had a reference point to tie very disparate stories together later. The chronological aspect then allowed us to take the audience on a journey of discovery. Just as the veterans go from knowing nothing about the military to becoming experts, so does the audience. We also asked about the veteran experience after leaving the military as well.

Between the 12 participants, we recorded over 40 hours of audio. All that audio had to be transcribed into written words so that we could see what we had, and how to start putting it together. After looking at several expensive options, we found a free web tool called "oTransrcibe" that allowed Laurel to play back audio at different rates so that she could type as she listened. Once she was done with this truly Herculean task, we had several hundred pages of text. The question now was what to do next--where to start?

I decided on something I called the "Folder Method." We printed out everything on paper and reviewed every word. We created categories, such as "joining up," "basic training," "arriving in Afghanistan," or "coming home," and assigned each a number. Then, when we read a story about one of these subjects, we circled it and numbered it. Then we got scissors out and cut out every circled story and put each story into its own folder. We ended up with sometimes 10 or more stories for each of about a dozen different topics.

Now we had taken 40 hours of testimony from 12 different people and organized it by subject matter and chronology. We had a dozen manila folders bursting with material. We took a look at each folder and chose only the top three stories from each topic to consider putting into the play. After that, Laurel then began the real work of writing the script: stitching together the different stories, and putting them into dialogue with each other, even though the people who told the stories had in most cases never met each other.

The First Draft

Laurel completed the first draft in late July/early August. Predating the Zoom phenomenon, we had a read-through conducted over Skype and phone calls with the actors, who were all in their home towns. That first script timed out at over three hours. Cutting was in order. Eventually, through diligent work and with the actors as collaborators, Laurel cut the script down to just over two hours. By the time of our first rehearsal on August 19, the script was in pretty good shape.

Because we had only eight actors for 12 roles, we also assigned multiple roles to several of our actors. This would mean frequent costume changes and actors working to differentiate the characters from each other. It was not ideal from a staging standpoint, but we had adopted a doctrine early on, that everyone who worked with us and volunteered their story would receive representation in the final product. As a mission-driven production, we viewed the sharing of these unknown stories as more important than theatrical "perfection."

Our First Interviewee

The first person to respond to our call for participants was an Army veteran who served in Afghanistan in 2012 as a sniper. Our first interview with him went so well that we scheduled another. His candor in revealing his stories and easygoing demeanor led us to expand his role in the production. We asked him if he would like to become our technical consultant on all matters military, and he agreed.

Rehearsal and Logistics

Rehearsing A/W was different in many ways from the "conventional" process we usually follow. The cast were not only learning their lines, business, and blocking, but also consulting with myself and Laurel to see what was working and what wasn't, whether to cut or retain passages, and how to transition between various scenes, scenarios, and speakers. The process was truly a group effort, a collaboration on all levels, to include also the stage management team and crew.

The actual physical production of the play was constrained by our decision to tour. We created a mobile paradigm based on two large Carthage vans. The first van would hold our personnel, the second would hold the eight footlockers that served as our scenery, as well as all the props, costumes, lighting equipment, sound equipment, etc. Laurel worked with assistant stage manager Claire Heronemus to plan out all touring details for our various venues. This involved setting up timetables, coordinating parking, and mapping routes among other things.

Into Production

This website is a work in progress; there are so many stories involving the experiences we had during our production that they will be included on an ongoing basis as the site is developed. The photos below give an idea of the touring setup and variety of spaces that AW inhabited.

We only used our dedicated theatre facilities once for the production: we loaded into our Studio Theatre space for Family Weekend. This smaller space allowed us to retain the intimate feel the show was designed around. Here is where I filmed the production. All other performances on campus took place in the Todd Wehr Center Jockey Rooms (view photos here), as a dress rehearsal for loading the show into other, non-theatrical venues during the tour.

AW was presented twice at the Kenosha Public Museum (view photos here), as well as at UW Stevens Point and the Wisconsin Veterans Museum in Madison, WI. AW was then invited to participate in the Kennedy Center/American College Theatre Festival (KC/ACTF) region 3 festival. We remounted the show in early 2016 at the Kenilworth Studio space on the campus of UW Milwaukee.

Watch a 10-minute highlight reel (created by Laurel's parents)

Fundraising

By pooling all the ticket proceeds we were able to make sizable donations to our two target organizations, Custom Canines and Team Rubicon. We awarded the funds in a ceremony after our final production at the Wisconsin Veterans Museum. Each organization receved $1000. Several hundred additional dollars were later donated to Veterans Outreach of Wisconsin in Racine. This was the beginning of a relationship that would continue with the Veteran Night of the Arts until 2019.

Awards and Honors

AW was the recipient of several KC/ACTF regional and national awards, as well as being chosen as a 2016 participating production for the Region 3 festival:

Certificates of Merit

Ensemble of Afghanistan/Wisconsin: Collaborative Performance

National Awards

Distinguished Director of a New Work

Distinguished Production of a New Work

Distinguished Performance by an Actor in a Play: Alexander Johnson

Personal Impact

Many of those who participated in, or watched, AW felt very personal impacts. Some veterans described a feeling of finally being understood, and having their stories treated with dignity and with accuracy. Others found it difficult to watch "themselves" embodied by student actors, re-living painful past events. And some found that while the experience might be uncomfortable, it also brought a feeling of calm and resolution, through a personal "historification" process regarding the details of their lives: an ability to separate their present state from their past, view these past events more objectively, and ultimately feel a sense of progress and relief, that growth and change are possible, and that time really can help to salve the wounds of the past.

Verbatim Theatre Discoveries

I discovered that the verbatim technique added value to our undergraduate theatre model in several distinct ways: first, students in verbatim projects get to practice a very different form of theatre making than our usual model of producing previously scripted "dramatic" plays. For some, this has been not only immediately enlightening, but has cultivated a deeper interest in using alternative theatre techniques to affect change.

Second, when the living subjects of these stories attend the event, a new awareness about the theatrical process is clarified for young theatremakers. The portrayal of "character" is thrown into a new focus when the student realizes that the care and respect they bring to portraying a real person is just as important to utilize in portraying a fictional one. Although I have spoken here mostly of the effect on actors, these realizations also extend to technicians and designers working on shows as well.

Third, students are able to directly connect their embodiment of real living people back to those people and see how transformative theatre has the power to be, beyond the fulfilling of their own personal or professional goals. They re-direct their attention outward to the people, the community, and experiences they are embodying. Many of the veterans who participated spoke afterwards about the effect of seeing their stories mirrored back to them through theatre, and how impactful it was to feel the affirmation that "their stories matter."

Fourth, students begin to view theatre as a community service and asset, and a means of consciousness-raising. We offered veterans an anonymous way to get their stories "out there" to the public, and so we were tying our theatre work directly into a community outreach activity, as well as engaging in a small-scale form of activism and art therapy. Most Americans are unaware of the realities faced by the tiny percentage of the population who serve, and the shows create a space for that dialogue.

Afghanistan/Wisconsin Credits

Cast (in order of appearance):

Marine Corps Infantryman Austin Nelson

Army EOD Technician/Army Ranger Justice Good

Navy and Air Force Chaplain Meg Keogh

Navy Airframe Mechanic/Marine Corps Communications Specialist Alex Johnson

Air Force Security Forces Dylan Baxter

Air Force Public Relations Officer/Army Intelligence Officer Hayley Sherwood

Army Patient Administration/Army Technician Alexis Gilkes

Army Sniper Dylan Heeter

In addition to their main roles, each cast member plays multiple ensemble roles

Production Team

Director: Martin McClendon

Production Stage Manager: Laurel McKenzie

Scenic Designer: Martin McClendon

Costume Designer: Kim Instenes

Lighting Designer: William Newcomb

Sound Designer: Colleen Ochab

Properties Designer: Amanda Zibell

Dramaturgy: Mike Anderle

Assistant Stage Manager: Claire Heronemus

Technical Director: William Newcomb

Master Carpenter: Zack Simonini

Wifi Weapons Design Rick Bingen

Running Crew: Anna Robertson

Light Board Operator: Amanda Zibell

Costume Crew: Illirida Memedovsky, Jordan Nazos

Scenic, costume, and lighting construction; painting: The dedicated students of the Carthage Theatre Department

Veteran Contributors:

This play was created to give voice to untold stories. It exists solely due to the generosity and honesty of the veterans whom we interviewed.