Trinity Rep Congratulations Providence Clemente Veterans' Initiative Graduates

Trinity Repertory Company congratulates the eight graduates of The Providence Clemente Veterans' Initiative (PCVI) Class of 2022. Since 2019, PCVI and Trinity Rep have worked together to bring the arts to veterans across Southern New England.

In 2019, The National Endowment for the Humanities awarded the Clemente Course in the Humanities a grant to expand its work with veterans, resulting in PCVI. PCVI provides free humanities classes for veterans living in Southern New England. The course is open to all veterans regardless of discharge status, age, or education. Those who complete the course can earn up to 6 collegiate credits from Bard College, which they can transfer to another college across the country if they choose.

PCVI has used Trinity Rep's space as its classroom since January 2019, although recently PCVI has been meeting virtually due to the pandemic. Trinity Rep Resident Company members Charlie Thurston, Rachael Warren, and Joe Wilson, Jr. and Artistic Director Curt Columbus have led dramatic readings and discussions with students enrolled in PCVI on Sophocles' plays Antigone and Ajax, as well as Arthur Miller's post-World War II drama All My Sons. PCVI also helped Trinity Rep coordinate this year's Veteran Voices event, where veterans had the chance to perform in Trinity Rep's Dowling Theater.

"The PCVI partnership with Trinity Rep goes to the very heart of the work we do with veterans," PCVI Director Dr. Mark Santow said. "It is one thing to read plays like Antigone or All My Sons, but it is quite another to experience them as living, breathing things that speak to our own often painful experiences. Curt Columbus and the resident company members not only bring the theater alive for our scholar-veterans, but by introducing them to characters and playwrights who have seen what they've seen, and thought what they've thought, they feel less alone, more understood, and more connected to the community. The PCVI-Trinity Rep partnership is a vivid example of the healing power of theater and the humanities."

Veteran Voices is a part of Trinity Rep's Green Light Ghost Light Project, an initiative created by Trinity Rep's Director of Community Engagement Dr. Michelle Cruz, dedicated to highlighting the voices of Southern New England's local veteran community on Trinity Rep stages. It is a combination of the Greenlight a Vet initiative, in which communities light a green light to show support for veterans, and the Ghost Light Project, in which theaters leave a light on to signal that the theater is a safe space for all. Trinity Rep is proud to continue partnerships with local veterans in Southern New England.

"We love our partnership with PCVI and hope we can keep building community together in perpetuity," Michelle said. "We have much to learn from each other and offering a space to listen and be heard is a special thing. One of the most rewarding times to witness are the moments the veterans have with our resident company actors, digging into the works of Sophocles, for example. To see themselves in a work that is more than 2000 years old and be able to discuss it collectively with our actors and fellow veterans is really something to behold."

For more information about PCVI, visit https://pvdvets.org.

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