Disability Culture Watch

Last Friday, I visited my favorite theatrical venue, The Public Theater, to attend the one-night-only production of the controversial Voices in Conflict. The Public is my favorite theatre because of its mandate for inclusiveness on stage and in its audience.

Voices in Conflict is a controversial play due to the content of the work and the contested history of its production. The play had been developed in a high school drama class in Wilton, Connecticut. The students told their drama teacher, Bonnie Dickinson, that they wanted to do something topical, and also mentioned that there were no opportunities at their high school to discuss the war in Iraq. After some deliberation, the class decided to craft their own play based on the writings of servicemen and women. They did a great deal of research, and assembled the writings - letters home, blogs, previously published comments - into a powerful theatre piece. Then the principal of Wilton High informed Ms. Dickinson and her students that the play could not be performed at the school. To learn about the battle that ensued, and the legal and professional jeopardy Ms. Dickinson is now in, visit this Connecticut blog and the production’s official website:  www.voicesinconflict.com.

As a result, the performance of Voices in Conflict at the Public was one of a handful that have taken place outside of Wilton. The staging, the performances, and the directing were extraordinarily good. The packed house was swept into this intimate, searing theatre piece. The most specific disability moment in the play was enacted by an eighteen year old female student, reading the words of a woman who had both her legs amputated as a result of a war injury. She says, in an upbeat voice, that she was glad to find out that prosthetic legs could be used with fashionable heels. But then, as feelings of loss and grief overcome her, she talks about the really high heels she used to love to wear, and how good she felt in them. She tells us: “I miss my body, my strong healthy body.” The soldier’s words reminded me of the fascination with the prosthetic leg of Heather Mills in Dancing with the Stars, which I wrote about here.

Voices in Conflict is an excellent example of documentary theatre - theatre that is (as its Wikipedia entry tells us) “a dramatic representation of societal forces using a close reexamination of events, individuals, or situations.” Our nation would be well served by art that brings to the stage, screen and page such testimony of the soldiers who have fought in this war in our name. Their perspective and their experience need platforms such as this in order to bring the soldiers fully home. I can only imagine the profound alienation they must feel upon returning to this country, knowing that the people of the United States are, by and large, fed up with this war. The alienation must be even more acute when a soldier has been wounded and returns here to a country ill-prepared to accommodate and re-integrate him or her. Further, when psychological and physical functioning are altered - and when body parts are missing or are not working - there is an alienation that you feel from your own body, and from the community you participated in in a previous physical state.

Three men who had served in Iraq were in the audience on Friday night and in the discussion period afterward spoke eloquently about the work and how powerful they found it. I believe at least one of the soldiers’ words were part of the play.

I was deeply moved by Voices in Conflict. It was an important signal event, pointing to the potential of theatre and other arts forms to help foster real homecomings, and to reduce the alienation between soldiers and other members of the American public. The Public is to be commended for once again serving the public.