Tri-Service
The Ancient Greek Helping Our Heroes
Greek tragedy is helping the public to understand PTSD, and military personnel to deal with it.
Bryan Doerries is an American theatre director and founder of Theatre of War who uses a reading of Sophocles' play Ajax to de-stigmatise the psychological injuries of war.
He spoke to Forces TV at the Edinburgh Book Festival:
"What the Greeks do is they give us an even wider vocabulary for understanding human experience, and they also say to audiences, and this is the public health message of what we do, if you relate to this in any way, in its most extreme or most subtle, you're not alone".
In the play, Greek warrior Ajax is in turmoil.
After almost a decade of fighting his best friend Achilles has been killed - shamed by the Generals in charge and boiling with pent up rage, he goes to kill his superiors - but the goddess Athena stops him.
Theatre of War will continue its tour in the US, but the hope is for it to return to the UK soon, and put Ajax in front of a British military audience.
More: 'PTSD: Looking Forward'
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