Veteran Arts:Tim Shields and how the arts had an impact on his life
Tim Shields and how the Feast of Crispian has helped him.
What the
arts have done for me is showed me a way to unpack my duffle bag of emotions,
and repack them when I’m done with them. In the military you’re trained to push
down your emotions as they just get in the way of the mission. Your buddy gets
blown away but you can’t stop, man the battle is still going on. Drive on! You
kill a bunch of people, what’s the big deal “they’re the enemy”. No they are guys
just like me, a father, a son, a brother, an uncle.
I started
with the Feast of Crispian group in Dec of 2016, they are a Shakespeare Theater
Group that works with Veterans here in Milwaukee. My wife saw a piece on a
local news program and called for me to come watch. So we got in touch with
them, in late November. I went to my 1st weekend event in December,
if I had not, I may not be here today. I was 2 weeks away from celebrating our 20th
wedding anniversary and I had just moved out of the house, my PTSD was in full
throttle and I was suicidal. I was full of anger and nowhere to go with it.
After my
first night of meeting other vets and going through the simple acting exercises
(though it was hard and brings up emotions that you have to deal with) it was
good. Saturday I was raw but I was going to do whatever was asked of me. They
cast me as Brutus and gave me the back ground of the scene and partnered me up
with another vet. Then they fed us our lines and dropped in some questions to
bring up emotions and let us go. It was fantastic to be able to release years
of anger and frustration in a way I never knew I could and not hurt anyone.
After the scene was over we talked about how I was feeling and how my partner was
feeling and then discovered what effect it had on others in the room. Then as the others got up and did scenes to have emotions come up out of nowhere just from
watching a scene, WOW, who knew.
Since that 1st
weekend I have done 3 more weekends, I have performed 2 “pop up” performances
and I have spoken to 4 different high school groups. I am now working with our
group for our Fall performance of Othello based on veterans experience’s in the
service.
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