The Theatre of War: what ancient Greek tragedies can teach us today

By Bryan Doerries

Book Overview

This is the personal and deeply passionate story of a life devoted to reclaiming the timeless power of an ancient artistic tradition to comfort the afflicted. For years, theater director Bryan Doerries has led an innovative public health project that produces ancient tragedies for current and returned soldiers, addicts, tornado and hurricane survivors, and a wide range of other at-risk people in society. Drawing on these extraordinary firsthand experiences, Doerries clearly and powerfully illustrates the redemptive and therapeutic potential of this classical, timeless art: how, for example, Ajax can help soldiers and their loved ones better understand and grapple with PTSD, or how Prometheus Bound provides new insights into the modern penal system. These plays are revivified not just in how Doerries applies them to communal problems of today, but in the way he translates them himself from the ancient Greek, deftly and expertly rendering enduring truths in contemporary and striking English. The originality and generosity of Doerries's work is startling, and The Theater of War --wholly unsentimental, but intensely felt and emotionally engaging--is a humane, knowledgeable, and accessible book that will both inspire and enlighten. Tracing a path that links the personal to the artistic to the social and back again, Doerries shows us how suffering and healing are part of a timeless process in which dialogue and empathy are inextricably linked.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0307959457
• ISBN13: 9780307959454
• Release Date: September 2015
• Publisher: Knopf Publishing Group
• Length: 304 Pages
• Weight: 0.97 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 5.1" x 8.1"

Customer Reviews

Changes my view of the classics

Going into this book I hadn't read many of the old plays. I had heard of Theater of War when I stumbled on a pandemic Zoom performance of Oedipus (mainly because Oscar Isaac was playing the lead). I was blown away by the performance and the following discussion time and picked up this book to learn more about the Theater of War project. In this book Doerries's main point is that these old drama's don't tell stories that are irrelevant to today, but in fact are telling about this that are happening here and now. Ajax, for example, isn't just raging from anger; he's dealing with PTSD, which not only affected warriors of that time, but even grabbed hold of one of Greece's mightiest and "manliest" figures. He then took this idea and began performing excerpts of these plays to soldiers and their families, with a time of discussion afterwards. I do not do the book justice in this review, so I highly recommend to anyone and everyone to give this a read and I encourage you to find Theater of War's online performances.