Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: “The long walk” is military jargon for Explosive Ordinance Disposal — the harrowing experience of a soldier defusing a possibly live bomb.
In 2012, Iraq War veteran Brian Castner published a memoir of his experiences in the field and the post-traumatic stress disorder he suffered after returning to civilian life. An electrical engineer, Mr. Castner was an Air Force captain who led an EOD unit in Kirkuk in 2006, though he never did the actual walk himself.
5 comments:
This opera caught my eye when I did my scavenger hunt project on the Pittsburgh Opera at the beginning of the year. I think it is really cool that the Pittsburgh Opera gets the chance to premier new operas, and that the resident artists get a chance to practice the skills that they are learning in the resident program on stage in real time, which is the unique and critical aspect of the program. This story seems to have created an interesting narrative and a unique, modern twist on the genre of opera and it is an important story to tell. This show reminded me of an article that came out in National Geographic a few years ago titled "Healing Soldiers" (here is a link to a version of it, if you are interested https://www.nationalgeographic.com/healing-soldiers/index.html) that talked about a therapy program that had veterans doing art to try and express themselves and PTSD they were going through. The common themes in the masks they made, which were showcased in the article, were not being understood, feeling like part of themselves had been destroyed from what they had experienced, or having this weird dichotomy in their minds from now being home – having "all these wounds and [not being able to] tell anybody about them" like Marine Cpl. Chris McNair is quoted saying in this NatGeo article. Theatre is the kind of open space space where these feelings can be shared with an audience, and I hope that this show delivers the message about PTSD that it wants, or even needs, to.
This opera seems really amazing and even though I'm not super fond of operas, this is one I would wanna go see. I'm glad that the soldier is played by a black man who experiences PTSD and is a veteran because that is a story about a lot of intersections that isn't told as frequently as it should be. An opera like this forces people to pay attention to PTSD, mental health in the black male community, and mental health in the veteran community. It sheds light on the stigmas of all of these topics.
I wonder if they show any interactions with the VA in this opera considering that the VA is really hard to negotiate with depending on what it is that people need help for. I think it'd be really interesting to see if it is harder to get treated for PTSD as a black male solider considering that it is harder to convince a therapist to see you as a black person no matter what.
While I have never seen an opera before, I really want to see the Long Walk because I am interested in how the story will use its medium to its benefit. I think opera is a very unique way of telling this story, but also a surprising because opera is thought to be a very classical medium. I am always fascinated by stories of PTSD, because not only is it interesting psychologically but also an invisible effect of war, that is often dismissed and overlooked. I think in the wake of the Iraq war, it’s an important representation of the cost of war, because it is so hard to measure. I always find stories about soldiers particularly interesting because they encounter such a different world from civilian life, and then to have to adjust to “normality”, can be extremely difficult and I am interested to see how how the opera portrays that story.
I absolutely love this opera. It shines a light on dark issues that far too often are passed over in most of the contemporary works. It is great to shine a light on these darker tragedies that are facing many of our troops and families when they come home after a long appointment. Some things I love about this opera or how it is so dependent upon a small cast of characters in each one has to be both powerful and controlled in their own right. I’ve seen this opera the only other two times has been performed in its life, but I am anxious to see how this particular group will bring the story to light. I am both excited and cautiously and optimistic in my expectations for this specific rendition of the show. It will be interesting to see how the design environment goes to help or hurt the production.
Post Traumatic Stress Disorder seems to be one of the more difficult things to portray on any platform. It's difficult for the makers to create something that effectively portrays the atmosphere and story line of a PTSD driven story, it's difficult for the actors to get into the mind set of a person with PTSD, and its difficult for an audience to come to terms with the aspect of losing sanity. I'm incredibly excited to see "The Long Walk" because I think it might be effective to the overall perception of PTSD. What I'm mostly excited to see is the addition of opera into the story, when I usually think of Opera I think of stock characters and a beautifully superficial story with drawn out gorgeous aria's. By bringing such a dense story to classical audiences, I really do believe that it has the potential to open up more peoples eyes to the realities of PTSD. It's usually something that comes up occasionally, there needs to be more art about it, more movies, more tv shows, it's sad that PTSD has almost become patriotic and its not fair to veterans if the mainstream audience decides to forget the pain they had to endure protecting this country.
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