Kyle Blanchard (left) plays Russell, an Iraq War veteran, and Jessica Werther portrays his wife, Elsie.
Playwright Nick Schweitzer got an inside look at how difficult it is for veterans to reintegrate into families, work and society after fighting overseas.
His play, Returning Home, which runs at the Bartell Theatre Aug. 19-27, is based on true stories shared by veterans. “I’ve been working on this issue of people dealing with trauma for many, many years,” says playwright and producer Schweitzer, whose past works include Surrounded by Reality, which celebrated Madison’s 2006 sesquicentennial, and Fighting Bob: A Love Story, about Bob and Belle La Follette.
Schweitzer, an adjunct law professor at UW-Madison, was inspired by the 1994 book Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Training and the Undoing of Character. Its author, psychiatrist Jonathan Shay, is an expert on post-traumatic stress disorder who worked for the Veterans Administration.
“As I read through the case histories, I thought it would make great theater,” recalls Schweitzer. With Shay’s permission, he dramatized the work, retitling it The Tragedy of Achilles in Vietnam.
A reading at a 2008 meeting of the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies in Chicago was well-received, especially by Dr. Sharon Wills, a psychologist with the Central Texas Veterans Health Care System. Wills helped get the show produced in Austin.
Rather than Vietnam vets, however, Wills was mainly treating veterans of the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. She invited the playwright to meet with some patients, and he began to gather material, with permission, from group therapy sessions. Some of these vets performed in a staged reading of Returning Home, the work that grew out of the sessions.
“The play focuses on group therapy as one of many interventions for dealing with PTSD, which is a label placed on a wide range of behaviors that are adaptive in situations of great stress, but that can’t be easily unlearned in ‘normal’ life,” says Schweitzer.
Austin’s veterans-turned-actors enjoyed Schweitzer’s script. “They were very complimentary,” says the playwright, laughing. “But they all said that I didn’t have enough profanity in it — even though every other word in the play is ‘fuck.’” The upcoming world premiere of Returning Home will be produced by Wilder Theater, a group that works with local playwrights. Madison Theater Guild staged a reading of the play in 2012.
Parental discretion is advised for profanity and suggestions of violence and sex. Tickets are available at bartelltheatre.org, and no one will be turned away due to lack of funds.
Editor's note: This article was corrected to include the correct publication date for Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Training and the Undoing of Character. It was published in 1994, not 2010.
