"The veterans project": historiography in/as performance

This output is one part of a practice research portfolio consisting of 12 performances, two journal articles, and two unpublished scripts. The Veterans Project is a performance of curated oral histories shared by military veterans with the communities in which they live.

This essay combines critical reflection with dramaturgical analysis to examine the ethics of historiography when working in applied ethnographic theatre with veterans of the US Armed Forces. Through this project we have sought to transform performance into a consciously historiographical space that comments on itself as it is being performed, simultaneously creating and disrupting narratives through structured improvisation and challenging audience notions of who serves, and why. In its blurring of the lines between dominant and alternative narratives, performer and subject, I posit that The Veterans Project upends the traditional hierarchy between historian and source.