Main description:

This book is a call to action to address the transition many soldiers face when returning to civilian life. It presents an arts-based therapeutic approach to dealing with trauma, exploring the development, performance, and reception of Contact!Unload, a play based on the lives of military veterans overcoming stress injuries encountered during military service. The book, which includes the full script of the play, offers academic, artistic, personal, and theoretical perspectives from people directly involved in the performances as well as those who witnessed the work. The play and book serve as a model for using arts-based approaches to mental health care and as a powerful look into the experiences of military veterans.

Contents:

Introduction / Graham W. Lea and George Belliveau

Part 1: Researching, Developing, and Creating

1 Staging War: Historical Contexts of Theatre and Social Health Initiatives with Veterans / Michael Balfour

2 Contact!Unload: The Cauldron / Chuck MacKinnon

3 Facilitating Therapeutic Change through Theatre Performance / Alistair G. Gordon, Marv Westwood, and Carson A. Kivari

4 A Soldier's Tale: "Nobody Understood What I'd Done" / Britney Dennison

5 Listening through Stories: Insights into Writing Contact!Unload / Graham W. Lea

6 Suicides to Sydney / Foster Eastman

7 Coming Home / Tim Laidler

8 Reconnaissance and Reclamation: Learning to Talk about the War / Anna Keefe

9 Impact on Veteran Performers / George Belliveau, Blair McLean, and Christopher Cook

10 Holding on to the Script / Phillip Lopresti

Contact!Unload: Annotated Playscript

Part 2: Performing, Witnessing, and Evaluating

11 Finding My Truth / Timothy Garthside

12 Unpacking Contact!Unload Using Relational-Cultural Theory / Candace Marshall with Graham W. Lea

13 Contact!Unload Revisited: Degrees of Separation / Lynn Fels

14 Remembering / Carl Leggo

15 A Poet(h)ic Reflection on Contact!Unload: Voices of Women Through War

/ Heather Duff

16 Soldiers Lead the Way in the Fight for Mental Health among Men / John S. Ogrodniczuk

17 Audience Experience of Vicarious Witnessing in Performing War / Marion Porath, Marla Buchanan, and Elizabeth Banister

18 Understanding the Impacts of Contact!Unload on Audiences / Jennica Nichols, Susan M. Cox, and George Belliveau

19 Vulnerable Strength Seen / JS Valdez and Jennica Nichols

Conclusion / George Belliveau and Graham W. Lea

Contributors; Index