10thirtysix

(bright music) (gentle music) - Welcome to "10 Thirty Six."

I'm Portia Young.

We continue our conversation on mental health.

According to the National Center for PTSD, about 6 out of every 10 men and 5 of every 10 women experience at least one trauma in their lives.

PTSD, post-traumatic stress disorder, is slightly more common among veterans than civilians.

PTSD is one form of trauma that can be treated using various medications and therapy techniques.

Here in Milwaukee, there's a program involving Shakespeare that's helping military veterans overcome trauma and reintegration issues.

Producer Scottie Lee Meyers takes us to an emotionally charged production of "Henry V" and other works from the Bard.

(gentle music) - This day is called the Feast of Crispian.

- The Feast of Crispian comes from this speech, this oration of Henry V in the play of the same name.

- He that outlives this day and comes safe home.

- It's a military speech.

It's a speech from a general to his soldiers.

- Will stand a tiptoe when the day is named.

- So it makes sense in attaching it to what we do because the bulk of our work is with veterans, and it is where the phrase the Band of Brothers for soldiers comes from.

We few, we happy few, we Band of Brothers.

- Feast of Crispian is a theater-based, mostly Shakespeare support program for any traumatized population.

But mostly what we do, mostly who we work with are veterans.

- We use acting techniques and particularly the work of William Shakespeare to engage with people who are trying to deal with trauma.

- We're in our 11th year now, so there's several hundred veterans have come through our activities.

(bright music) - [Nancy] It starts off with the veterans coming into the room.

(veterans chatting) - [Bill] We have had a class in the residential program in the auxiliary for about five years, a weekly class.

And for about two years, we've had a weekly class in the outpatient program.

- Mostly it's guys, we do have women, they can be in for depression or suicidality or PTS or any number of things.

- So they come in, it's in the rec hall on the third floor of the Zablocki VA. We bring in real coffee in the morning for everybody so that's a big treat and some fruit and things to gnaw on, food.

We are the Feast of Crispian after all.

And they volunteer for it and most of them think they're coming to see a Shakespeare play because it's a little hard to explain what it is we do.

(gentle music) - Okay, good morning, good morning.

So many faces I'm so happy to see.

We are Feast of Crispian.

I'm Nancy.

This is Bill.

Where are you Jim?

Jim.

And we're gonna get you up today acting Shakespeare.

And we've never, ever, not once had somebody who couldn't do it.

Maybe number one is just the opportunity to explore emotions, in basic training, they spend a lot of time suppressing your emotions and your emotional expression because those kinds of things can get you into trouble.

What we feel we do here is to be able to offer you a place to start to play with and experiment with and be curious about emotional expression.

- We start with a circle.

That circle is kind of deep in our bones from a primal place.

And it's a place of story, it's a place of magic.

And why did King Arthur have a round table?

Because it's a community of equals.

- We're going to do introductions and a little bit of checking what we call check-in.

- We have a set of questions that are pretty standard.

The first question is the landscape of your childhood.

- My name is Charlie Walton.

My landscape of my childhood is the cotton fields of Mississippi.

- Where in the world do you feel most yourself?

- I left for Vietnam after high school.

And from that, where I learned to feel most myself was helping others to help themselves.

- Check in with a sensation in your body.

- Sensation in my body feels like, I feel like I fit in.

- And then we ask them to give it a color.

- Purple.

- I'll share my purple.

- We're starting to ask them to engage their imagination, their sense of self, their memories.

- Then we just kinda move on to the day.

Moving into a series of acting exercises.

(soft music) - This first part is we're gonna just walk about the space and I'm gonna give you some little different adjustments to think about.

And the point of that is to start to wake up a sense of both your imagination and a sense of checking in with yourself.

Now imagine yourself leaving something that you are so happy to get away from.

And what comes up for you, a feeling, a memory, a thought.

And find someone to stop and stand across from.

And what are you taking in as you look at this person?

What is this story?

And walk about the space.

And what do you carry with you from that encounter?

- It gives you a zap, doesn't it?

It's like you're asked to stand there and make eye contact.

Some of them can't even do it.

If their level of PTSD is pretty high, it's not unusual to get somebody who goes, "That was such a privilege to get to do that.

I never get to stare into somebody's eyes.

That's amazing."

- [Bill] And while you are taking in this person, notice where this person holds their sense of regret.

And remember that as you're seeing them in their regret, they're seeing you in yours.

So what is that like to see and to be seen in regret?

And now take in where this person holds their sense of hope and walk about the space.

- [Nancy] And I'd like you to take a walk with your teenage or pre-military self.

What do you notice about them?

How do they feel about walking with you?

Are they excited and hopeful, or are they wary of you?

Or do they kind of think you're foolish?

Are they a little bit disappointed in you?

And if you could give this young person a piece of wisdom or something they need to know right now, what would you say to them?

- It's kind of a big deal, imagination.

We kind of use it a lot when we're growing up as children.

It's a huge part of how we learn.

And then we stop using it a lot.

But I think we're finding out more and more with continued research how absolutely important imagination is.

(gentle music) - So when Charlie and I were looking at each other head on, he was dead set.

I kept looking away and I felt like the whole entire world was watching us.

Like white and black, you know what I'm saying?

And how they're both staring each other down.

But I felt like I can't even look deep into his soul because I can't even imagine.

And it's just how like society kind of looks at things right now, it's either black or white.

- This is what I saw in you.

I saw all that you were saying.

I saw the confusion.

You looking all around and I can feel you.

And when I can hold you long enough to stop, you'll get a little more release and you can look at me a little bit longer.

But when we do that more often, you'll be able to look me in my eye and I look in your eye.

And we'll see the love we have in each other as people.

(group cheering) - When we first started this, veterans used to tell us all the time, civilians can't understand our experience.

And what I would say is that's partially true.

But it may also be true that if you can try and express it and tell your story, we can move a little bit closer to that.

I feel like today when I was walking with my younger self was the first time I looked at myself and appreciated who I actually am.

It was nice to finally see myself in an image that I've never seen myself before.

It was very hard to do that.

When you said "What would you tell yourself?"

I told myself that I'd never give it up.

It's hard to believe that I wanted to give up before.

It's hard to talk about that right now too because it's real, man.

That was really tough.

- [Bill] So what's it feel like now that you've had that little exchange?

- It feels incredible, man.

It really does.

- Now we're gonna do two person scenes and sort of put you into a moment in a play.

- And then basically the rest of the day, we do scene work and we stand them up generally two by two.

- We'll put everybody into a Shakespeare scene.

- There'd be some such, no question.

- What's thou do?

- What's thou do?

- We use our techniques to work the scene.

There's one of us at each shoulder of the participants.

- I think that what's not.

- I think that what's not.

- So the word comes into your ears.

We simply ask that you repeat them.

This first couple of scenes that we'll do will come from Shakespeare's play "Julius Caesar."

So this scene is well towards the end of the play.

Most of the conspirators have been killed.

Cassius and Brutus are the only ones left.

We are going to have essentially the final battle that's gonna determine which set of these Roman fighters is going to win and take over Rome.

That you have wronged me.

- That you have wronged me.

- Do appear in this.

- Do appear in this.

- You have condemned and noted Lucius Pella.

- You have condemned and noted Lucius Pella.

- We do Shakespeare only.

There's a whole raft of reasons why we do Shakespeare and not modern plays.

- What Shakespeare did was he just kept digging deeper and deeper into what it means to be a human being.

- And when you inhabit those giant stories and you're speaking in verse in the poetry of Shakespeare, it's full of metaphor and imagery that allows a kind of larger space of imagining yourself in that.

- [Nancy] A lot of people had a horrible experience in the military and hated it.

But everybody who comes out of the military misses the camaraderie.

- And the other thing is hard.

That's hard.

It's nice to do hard (muted) And that's something that happens in the military all the time.

- We have a second technique where we ask rather provocative questions.

- One of you had to curse out a good friend before in your own life.

You know that you are Brutus that speak this.

- You know that you're Brutus that speaks this.

- You don't ask them to answer the question.

We just drop that question and then repeat the line of Shakespeare's text.

The name of Cassius.

- The name of Cassius.

- What part of his body would you go for first to defend yourself?

The name of Cassius.

- The name of Cassius.

- [Nancy] What we're really trying to do is to pop some kind of emotion or some kind of memory.

- When they say the next line, some of that energy, some of that feeling, some of that color goes into the speaking of the line.

I an itching palm.

- I an itching palm.

- Did he just accuse you of being a thief?

I an itching palm.

- I an itching palm.

- When we first came to the VA, they asked us how we were gonna respond when the veterans got really mad.

And we were like, that's the point is for them to have a place to put that and to be able to express it healthfully.

And because it's a safe context, they're doing it in the context of theater.

- I am a soldier, I.

- I am a soldier, I.

Older in practice.

- Older in practice.

- Abler than yourself to make conditions.

- Abler than yourself to make conditions.

(applause) Billy Billy Billy.

- Nice.

- Have a seat, gentlemen, please.

Having some fun now?

- [Nancy] David, because he's brand new to this, how are you feeling?

- I feel elated.

I honestly do.

- [Nancy] You just had a big fight.

How can you feel elated?

- That was unexpected, but it was in a good way.

It was very, very different to be in a confrontational environment without there being-- - Consequences.

- Consequences, yes, thank you.

(gentle music) - I couldn't understand why I was having such a hard time being at home with my wife and being with my kids and having problems with aggression and substance abuse.

I will be honest, I had no intention at all of participating.

I found a part of myself that I didn't know existed, and as I say that, I'm getting the gooseys right now.

It really just kind of gave me a different level of therapy that I didn't know I needed.

(gentle music) - This is the new paradigm for what we should be looking at is making life better for people.

And rouse him at the name of Crispian.

We're not at a point where we know exactly what cures trauma and moral injury.

- Be that you'll see this day and live old age.

- But we know that there are things that make people's lives better.

- We yearly on the vigil feast his neighbors.

- And what we do makes people's lives better.

- And say tomorrow is St. Crispian.

- Upon St Crispin's days.

- We few.

- [All] We few.

- Look around.

Yeah, we few.

- [All] We few.

We happy few.

- [All] We happy few.

- As happy as we can (muted) be on a day like this.

We happy few.

- [All] We happy few.

- That's enough.

(applause) - Feast of Crispian attracts around 150 to 200 veterans nationwide every year through its programming inside and outside of the VA. Our veterans are the new focus of a Milwaukee PBS documentary airing in November, "A Hallowed Home for Heroes."

It looks at the rich history of our national landmark, Milwaukee Soldier's Home, its impact on current veterans, and why it's important to preserve its future.

Here's a sneak peek.

(dramatic music) - The Soldier's Home is the most visible and the least recognized building probably in Milwaukee.

People go by it every day.

If people think of it at all, it's the somewhat mysterious sort of mansion up there on the hill.

- When I've gone to Brewers games, I've seen like this cool building peeking over the trees, but never went to explore it.

- My dad took me to County Stadium and you could see the bleachers on the hillside.

I asked my dad, who are those guys?

And he told me that they were veterans.

- [Speaker] Dad had been the longest serving chaplain, I think still is.

- First of all, it's a huge surprise if I tell anybody this is where I lived.

- [Host] Wow.

- And that was Helen's room.

- [Speaker] It's a national treasure.

- [Speaker] The Soldier's Home literally goes all the way back to Abraham Lincoln.

- President Lincoln in his second inaugural makes a very clear statement about the need to care for the veterans of the Civil War.

So it's a very important moment.

- The story of the Soldier's Home in Milwaukee starts with the women who have been taking care of soldiers for a couple of years before this place was created.

- [Speaker] It just really looked pretty dire.

It really was very close to being demolished.

- [Speaker] The care that was taken with the restoration, I think that's a miracle.

- [Speaker] I think the renovation needs to be finished and losing any one of the elements I think compromises the integrity of the whole.

- 54 Years ago, I was married here.

- The goal was always to get these buildings put back into the service of veterans because that's what they were built for.

- I was homeless for 14 years before coming in here.

When I first seen my apartment, I cried.

- This is where we sat every Thanksgiving at the dining room table.

- [Speaker] It's a whole different perspective today than living here as a kid.

- You can tell there's a lot of history in this building and sometimes you can even feel it.

- I can't believe that I'm actually in this hallowed building.

It is something that is beyond just living here.

- If we didn't have old Maine, this city, this country would be diminished.

This country would also have broken a promise that it made to veterans.

- It's part of our history.

- But I don't think it's a part that very many people know of.

- When you have a jewel this intact in the heart of your city, save it, just save it.

- "A Hallowed Home for Heroes" airs Monday, November 6th at 8:00 PM right here on Milwaukee PBS Channel 10.

If you'd like to attend a free public screening of the documentary at the Milwaukee VA on November 2nd, please go to milwaukeepbs.org for more information and to register.

Fall has certainly arrived, but many of us are still clinging to warm summer memories.

Local public art nonprofit Joy Engine made sure summer ended on a high note.

We take you to the historic Mitchell Street where they held a first of its kind large scale art and light festival called Nitelight.

(upbeat music) - [Alexandria] On Milwaukee's South Side, one of the last festivals of the season took place.

On the surface, it was just another street festival.

It was family friendly, there were lots of local vendors, there was good food, good music, and fun activities.

But what made this festival different was the main event.

This was Nitelight.

(bright upbeat music) Presented by Joy Engine, a local public art nonprofit, they worked with local artists to bring a dazzling light and art show to historic Mitchell Street.

- Joy Engine is a newer nonprofit.

Basically what we like to do is really wow the city of Milwaukee like bring in crazy events that we aren't seeing around here.

And I had gone to a festival last year in Cincinnati called Blink, which is a 30 block installation of different kinds of light shows.

I fell in love with a type of art called projection mapping.

- [Alexandria] Projection mapping is the art of using projectors to map light onto three dimensional objects.

This technique combined with music and sound creates a highly immersive experience.

- I would say my favorite part about this is the fact that we're projecting 30,000 lumens of light onto a three story building that's a block wide.

- I'm super excited to see the work on the building and see everybody's work on the building.

This is something I've never seen in person, so I'm really excited about it.

- [Alexandria] Four Milwaukee artists were picked to create short films for Nitelight.

Wes Tank and Brianna Cole were two of the contributing artists.

- My piece is essentially a visual score of a song that I made.

And it's a song that I started like 10 years ago and I was working on it off and on.

It's part of a larger album that I'm gonna be dropping this year.

But I love Mitchell Street, I love the people of this neighborhood and it's a really great part of town, and I'm really excited to see some cool stuff happening here and activating this awesome historic corridor.

(upbeat music) - I think that the piece that I created really embodies that joy.

And even though it's not in the same style as my other work, being able to animate a piece that kind of shows how I feel when I listen to the song is just super special to me.

- [Alexandria] Mitchell Street Arts was chosen to be the backdrop for this one of a kind show.

The 122 year old building, once home to the Kunzelmann-Esser Furniture Company, is now a center for artists to work and collaborate.

- We just had our grand opening on August 18th.

The project actually started with the space and we went through about six months of just talking with local residents, local artists, and civic leaders and saying, what do you want to see here?

What sort of programming would you come to?

What do you want your street to look like in five years?

And we had a vague sense as a team of what we wanted to build it into, but our entire mission and vision and values were informed by those conversations.

- [Alexandria] As the sun set on a cool September evening, audience members found their seats and waited in anticipation for the big show to start.

(bright music) (bright music continues) (bright music) An expression of my performance (indistinct singing) Ask questions whenever possible Process information made from questions Turn that into more questions I'm just hoping sometimes Doesn't even tell all stories Of all different (indistinct) terms (indistinct singing) (bright music) (applause) - One of Joy Engine's past installations include Cracking Art, which brought a flock of bird sculptures to Milwaukee's Lakeshore State Park, some of which can still be seen outside the public market today.

That will do it for this edition of "10 Thirty Six."

Please remember to check us out on all of our social media platforms.

We'll see you next time here on "10 Thirty Six."

(bright upbeat music)