Theater of War (TOW), a New York-based production company, presents readings of the ancient general Sophocles’ plays Ajax and Philoctetes to military communities across the United States and Europe. These ancient plays depict the timeless psychological and physical wounds that warriors experience and offer an opportunity to help our nation’s guard members and reservists connect with each other and share their common experiences.

It has been suggested that ancient Greek drama was a form of storytelling, communal therapy, and ritual reintegration for combat veterans provided by combat veterans. Just as the ancient Greek citizen-soldiers gathered together thousands of years ago to watch Sophocles’ plays, so too are today’s guard members and reservists who attend TOW performances.

Military service was required of all citizens in ancient Athens. To be a citizen meant being a soldier, and vice versa. Because everyone served in the military, the health of the democracy depended upon the health of the force and the ability of citizen-soldiers to move fluidly and frequently between the worlds of military service and civic participation. Like today’s guard members and reservists, ancient Greek citizen-soldiers were expected to defend their homeland and to provide for their families. The boundary between being a citizen and a soldier was constantly blurred.

It is likely that ancient Greek citizen-soldiers faced many of the same challenges faced by guard members and reservists today. The frequency of deployments and the rapid changes in operational tempo required the Greek force to be flexible and fast to mobilize to the fight. At the time that Athenian drama was at its peak, Athens was at war on six fronts. The audiences for whom these plays were performed were comprised of thousands of citizen-soldiers, warriors who, like today’s guardsmen and reservists, faced frequent transitions between military and civilian lives.

Just as Athens was strained as it fought in multiple wars, so too is the United States — fighting long wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Today’s guard members and reservists deploy at the highest rates in history and face the same kind of frequent transitions between military and civilian life as the Athenians did. However, while the Athenian citizen-soldiers and their families lived in communities of people facing the same kinds of challenges, we’ve learned from our guard and reserve families that they often live outside of the support network of a military community.

TOW hopes to help create that missing community for guard and reserve members and their families, and provide a safe, supportive space for them to come together and share their stories and common experiences, connecting them—across thousands of years—to generations of citizen-soldiers and military families who came before them.

We hope audience members walk away from these performances understanding that there are other service members across the country who face the same issues that they do, that they aren’t alone. We hope that they feel compelled to continue this dialogue in their homes, and share their experiences with their communities.

We look forward to hearing the unique stories and perspectives of our nation’s reservists and guard members, and to sharing them with other military audiences as we travel across the country.

For more information about Theater of War, please visit www.theater-of-war.com. Connect with us through our page on Facebook as well, www.facebook.com/theaterofwar.

*Guardsmen and reservists, be sure to view DCoE’s Web page devoted especially to you. There you’ll find fact sheets, links to valuable resources and more.

*Check out our July edition of DCoE in Action, where you’ll find more content on all things guard and reserve.