A new event is coming next week and it’s called the Telling Project. Jonathan Wei created the Telling Project, and simply put, here’s what it is.
"Military veterans and military family members tell their stories of service to their communities.”
When Wei says “tell their stories” he means onstage, with an audience.
“We’ve been at war for the last 13 years—that’s a story worth telling," he said. "And it’s a story worth telling in all its different facets. And many of those facets have absolutely no resemblance to the ones we typically think of.”
Wei told me how the process for telling those stories actually happens.
"We interview them about their military experiences, and transcribe the interviews verbatim.”
From those transcriptions, Wei creates a script.
“And we give them the script and we work with them to make sure that the story that is their part is one that they want to tell.”
They rehearse the telling of their stories, and that play is coming to the Tobin Center for the Performing Arts. Wei gave me more details on that what they do.
“That’s going to be a performance involving eleven San Antonio military veterans and military family members.”
The Telling Project has also partnered with PBS station KLRN, which Wei says is coming to the Tobin too.
“And they are also going to tape the performance and re-broadcast it at a later date, I believe on Veterans Day.”
He spares no adverbs to describe the project.
“It’s utterly and endlessly fascinating, and it has expanded me and my world immeasurably.”
And then he threw me this unexpected curve ball about who, in a sense, this project is actually for.
“We’re not necessarily doing this for the veterans. Bottom line: this is a project for civilians. We’re the ones that don’t know.”
We’ve much more on the Telling Project here: http://thetellingproject.org/
And KLRN's involvement here: http://www.klrn.org/veterans/telling/
