Veterans make up cast of play set to premiere in honour of Mental health awareness week.
Soldier in the Arts (SITA) is observing Mental Health Awareness Week this year with performances of two plays at the Alumnae Theatre in downtown Toronto.
The shows ‘I Found my Horn’ and ‘Tunnel at the end of the Light’ both have themes centered around mental health and mental health issues, and aim to use theatre as means of addressing these issues.
Jonathan Guy Lewis, solo performer of ‘I Found my Horn’ and writer and director of ‘Tunnel at the end of the Light’ says, “In terms of mental health, I think we’re struggling with this idea of resilience, we struggle even though there are avenues and there’s much more of a spotlight on being able to open up about it…and maybe seeing things like tunnel at the end of the light to maybe start or trigger a conversation, I think is a very powerful way to help people.”
‘I Found my Horn’ is a true story about a man, Jasper Rees, and his mid-life crisis. Adapted from the book, the play focuses on Jasper, his divorce, his relationship with his teenage son, and his image of himself and his passion.
When moving his things out of the house, Jasper rediscovers his old French horn after 39 years. With it comes the trauma of a past solo performance that had gone terribly wrong.
The play takes the audience through the various emotions and difficulties Jasper faces as he tries to secure a spot in the amateur solo performances for the British Horn society, an attempt to master his old passion.
Photo by: Ayeshwini Lama
“Really the play is about finding your mojo again, reconnecting with your passions and being brave, finding who you are again. It is about reconnecting with his son. So, the horn is really a metaphor. I think, it is a powerful archetypal story, and I think that’s why people get something out of it because it plugs into their own their own story,” said Lewis.
‘Tunnel at the end of the Light’ is a play written specifically for Canadian veterans and this will be its world premiere.
“It’s looking at the Canadian experience of serving of being a warrior and service in Afghanistan and the reason I wanted to write this new play was watching the fall of Kabul and just how veterans feel about that,” Lewis said.
The play is set in the eve of a funeral for a veteran who led a platoon in Afghanistan. The group of veterans gathered at the funeral share memories and stories about their time in Afghanistan and their feelings about the present situation.
Lewis shared that half of the cast are actual veterans who served in Afghanistan.
“They’re able to tell it how it is from the inside, and you would be hard pressed to tell who the veterans are and who are the actors, which I think is a compliment to both the actors and the veterans,” he said.
Soldiers in the Arts is a program of the Roland Gossage Foundation that uses theatre to address traumatic stress and related mental health problems encountered by Veterans and their families. The program also works to create and provide career opportunities in the arts and creative outlets for veterans and their families.
“It’s the idea that you can start healing through sharing and telling stories. Theatre is very, very powerful, and that’s what I’m plugged into. That’s what that’s what floats my boat. It’s trying to share this stuff to really heal from the inside,” Lewis said.
I Found my Horn ran from May 3 to 7, and performances of Tunnel at the end of the Light will take place at Alumnae Theatre from May 10 to 21.
Tickets can be purchased here.
