The Theater of War: What Ancient Greek Tragedies Can Teach Us Today Audiobook

Quotes

• “The Theater of War is a testament both to the enduring power of the classics and to the vital role art can play in our communal understanding of war and suffering.”

  — Phil Klay, New York Times bestselling author

• “The theater of ancient Greece was many things…[It is] the therapeutic potential of catharsis that most interests Bryan Doerries… An impressive and accomplished journey.”

  — New York Times Book Review

• “[Doerries’] compelling, raw book is both memoir and manifesto; he chronicles his own gradual discovery of the power and relevance of Greek tragedies while also championing their social utility…The Greek tragedians can still help us know and cure ourselves.”

  — Boston Globe

• “Extraordinary…Riveting…Doerries convinces us that we can find permission to feel our own pain. To see his productions today, or to see Greek tragedy through his eyes, is to become measurably healthier and more human.”

  — Daily Beast

• “A potent reminder of the real-world potential of authentic drama.”

  — Booklist

• “Doerries has a knack for putting ancient speeches into powerful modern words.”

  — Kirkus Reviews

• “Doerries shows how performances of Sophocles and Aeschylus can salve the mental wounds of soldiers with PTSD, as well as prison inmates and guards, terminally ill patients, and hospice workers…Doerries’ potent memoir reveals that the enduring power of Greek dramas lies in their ability to help us understand the present.”

  — Publishers Weekly

• “A deeply humane quest, movingly recalled. Doerries’ passionate search for meaning in ancient text has led him out of the dusty stacks of scholarship into an arena of ecstatic public engagement. He has taken his elegantly reasoned thesis—that the main business of tragedy has always been catharsis—and created a theatrical experience that has lifted countless audiences out of isolation and into profound community.”

  — Garry Trudeau, Pulitzer Prize winner

• “In this riveting narrative, simply but elegantly told, Doerries movingly resurrects the inner life of a people who lived 2,500 years ago but whose struggles evoke our own familiar and damaged present, now endowed by this wonderful book with more drama, more tragedy, more compassion, more possibility. Here is the proof at last: our future depends on the gifts of the past.”

  — Ken Burns, Emmy Award–winning director and producer of documentary films

• “I have always thought of Greek tragedies as the earliest public service announcements. Those ancient stories of family politics, their warnings about civic duty, and their parables of grief and its management are as vital today as when first written. Through his translations and public readings, and now this powerful book, Doerries offers modern audiences access to these ancient PSAs. We hunger and thirst for the guidance these plays contain.”

  — Frances McDormand, Academy Award–winning actress

• “The Theater of War is an enthralling, gracefully written, and urgently important examination of the vital, ongoing relationship between past and present, between story and human experience, and between what the ancients had to report about warfare and human values and the desperate moral and psychological struggles that soldiers still undergo today. Bryan Doerries has given us a gift to be treasured.”

  — Tim O’Brien, National Book Award–winning author

• “This book illuminates how Greek tragedy penetrates to the deepest of levels in us all. It also shows how certain audiences, when given permission, can help illuminate the urgency and relevance of these ancient stories today. In his approach to tragedy, Doerries has found the way to remove out-of-date barriers and clean the outer crust of language with fresh words so that the essential can appear once more.”

  — Peter Brook, award-winning director

• “A memoir that testifies to the power of community in the face of tragedy.”

  — Mary Lynn Bracht, author of White Chrysanthemum