This is a book about
the author's passionate love affair with ancient Greek plays, how he goes
beyond merely making them relevant to our time by finding therapeutic benefit
in them, and how he finds ways to adapt them for a variety of populations and
uses.
Doerries begins by telling us about two formative relationships, representing
opposite extremes, that have influenced his worldview. In the first case,
we learn how his father, a diabetic, effectively commits suicide over a period
of decades by gorging himself on sweets. He rationalizes his behavior to his
son by suggesting that, no matter what he does, his life is destined to end in
disaster anyway like "those Greek plays." (p. 17) In contrast, we
hear of the author's relationship with a young woman, doomed by cystic
fibrosis, who manages to make every moment of her all-too-brief life matter.
She goes on to provide an object lesson in how to die with grace and dignity.
These experiences afford Doerries an insight into mortality beyond his
years. He also gains insight into his own destiny, eschewing an academic career
for a path of his own making. He follows his intuition which tells him
"If I could present readings...maybe something healing could happen."
(p. 66) He then begins to devise his own translations from the original Greek
which he directs in dramatic readings, and he seeks out the audiences that will
benefit from them.
One of the plays that captures his imagination, Sophocles's "Ajax,"
tells of a warrior who loses his friend to war, becomes despondent, and takes
his own life. Doerries discovers that this storyline is familiar territory to
sufferers of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Consequently, when he
presents it at military bases it produces an abreactive effect. Indeed,
the pent-up emotion he elicits has no other outlet, and he and his performers
become folk heroes. Of course, there are detractors as well.
In the remainder of the book, Doerries finds additional applications for his
method, from prisoners in Guantanamo Bay to hospice providers to victims of
natural disasters.
