{"id":17536,"date":"2019-04-03T09:00:18","date_gmt":"2019-04-03T16:00:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/?p=17536"},"modified":"2019-04-01T11:29:20","modified_gmt":"2019-04-01T18:29:20","slug":"new-play-looks-at-afghanistan-soldiers-family-dynamics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/2019\/04\/03\/new-play-looks-at-afghanistan-soldiers-family-dynamics\/","title":{"rendered":"New play looks at Afghanistan soldiers\u2019 family dynamics"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Imagine having a loved one halfway across the world and the only way to communicate with them is through a spotty satellite phone. This is the experience many of the characters face in SNAFU Dance Theatre\u2019s production of Calling Home: Stories from Military Families<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The play is inspired by the real-life stories of military families and is put together by playwright Kristin Atwood and SNAFU dance theatre co-artistic director Kathleen Greenfield. Atwood, who was working toward her PhD at the time, approached Greenfield with the idea of turning her PhD research into a play. The two began sifting through interview transcripts and discovered the rich stories of military families.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThat was the big inspiration,\u201d says Greenfield, \u201cjust taking actual documentary pieces of interviews and turning it into something performable.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a>
Calling Home: Stories from Military Families explores what it\u2019s like to have a loved one off at war (photo provided).<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Greenfield didn\u2019t just use these interviews as inspiration; she also uses word-for-word live projections of the interviews during the play.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe projections really help with the documentary kind of aspect, to create a mood, and to also bring everybody back to earth and remember that these are interviews,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On top of the projections, the play uses music and movement to help these stories come to life. \u201cWe have movement sequences where we discuss PTSD, or mourning a loved one,\u201d says Greenfield. \u201cSometimes words don\u2019t cut it, so the added elements of movement try to represent those moments that can\u2019t be spoken.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In traditional SNAFU style, the production also has an \u201cinteractive coffee-shop style talkback\u201d after every production of the show.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cPeople who come and see the show will have a chance to talk directly with the actors and the writer and myself to share their stories and experiences,\u201d says Greenfield, who stresses that it\u2019s \u201cnot really a feedback for the writing and stuff like that, but more of people\u2019s actual experience and stories.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The play itself tells the story of five military families, all represented by five female actors and one male actor. The male actor and one of the female actors play soldiers who are deployed in Afghanistan. The male actor plays the role of the husband to the different wives at home, while the female soldier addresses the issue of a mother leaving her family behind. The rest of the wives follow in the social hierarchy of a military community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere\u2019s the CO\u2019s wife, who is kind of at the top and everyone goes to her for advice,\u201d says Greenfield. \u201cThen there\u2019s the last wife, whose husband has PTSD, and she\u2019s addressing that and she has a newborn child. Then there\u2019s the typical wife who is kind of funny and quirky, and then we have one wife called The Other Wife that the rest of the wives kind of push away and reject because she\u2019s just a hopeless romantic.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The play being set in Afghanistan also adds an interesting touch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t talk about Afghanistan as much as we should,\u201d says Greenfield. \u201cIt\u2019s a war we don\u2019t spend as much time focusing on and we don\u2019t really acknowledge the people we lost in Afghanistan. I think that\u2019s something that can be taken away from [the play]\u2026 audiences will have a chance to understand the dynamic of people who were deployed in Afghanistan.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Calling Home: Stories from Military Families<\/em> addresses the similarities between a working-class family and a military family.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe writing and arranging that Kris has done,\u201d says Greenfield, \u201chas really opened up that these military families, besides that fact that they\u2019re separated from a loved one by long distance, are just working-class families getting through and figuring out how to take everything day by day when they\u2019re missing someone.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Calling Home: Stories from Military Families<\/em>
Various times, Thursday April 11 to Sunday, April 14
$15-$20, Metro Theatre
snafudance.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Imagine having a loved one halfway across the world and the only way to communicate with them is through a spotty satellite phone. This is the experience many of the characters face in SNAFU Dance Theatre\u2019s production of Calling Home: Stories from Military Families. The play is inspired by the real-life stories of military families […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":17537,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,230],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17536","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts","category-april-3-2019"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17536","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17536"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17536\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17539,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17536\/revisions\/17539"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17537"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17536"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17536"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17536"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}