Flynn Center for the Performing Arts :: 2008/2009 Season

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Developed with the support of the Flynn Center’s New Art Space Assistance (N.A.S.A.) Grant, Jen Berger shares Sound Off: Combat Stories Revealed, a new creative performance and documentary theater work that explores the stories of veterans from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Berger, who runs a campaign at Burlington’s Peace & Justice Center that provides truth in military recruitment/enlistment education to high school students and community members statewide, incorporates her experiences working with veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in this work-in-progress showing. “Their powerful stories have angered, saddened, and inspired me in my work and life,” remarks Berger. “I have carried these stories with me and share them in my work to highlight the differences in what the media portrays what is going on overseas and what is happening from a soldier’s perspective.”

Berger has worked with a small group of actors with varying levels of experience to develop this performance piece which tells the stories of veterans. Using minimal sets and costuming, as well as a narrative voice, she shares the realities of military service with her audience with the hope of creating dialogue and advocating for social change. Berger plans to ultimately present the finished piece in community settings throughout Vermont, incorporating discussions about the cost of war at home, and creating video footage for education and awareness.

A graduate of Burlington College with a focus in community based arts and social change, Berger works with the HomeBase Arts & Movement Program, teaching multimedia visual, performance, and textile arts classes to adults with developmental disabilities. She has also taught visual arts classes for VSA Arts of Vermont and assisted with the organization’s one-woman performance Crazy. Other performance work has included facilitating programs with the YMCA’s after school drama club and work with the Theatre of the Oppressed, the Theatre for Social Justice, Spielpalast Cabaret, Vincez (an adaptation of Robert Musil’s The Man Without Qualities), and Give Peace a Dance, among other projects.

The next N.A.S.A. application deadline will be Monday, August 25. Visit the Flynn website at www.flynncenter.org/nasa.html for more information. The Flynn Center N.A.S.A. Grant provides Vermont artists the opportunity to create new work in a setting that is conducive to working deeply and exploring new territory. N.A.S.A. Grants are open to individual artists or a group of artists for projects in theater, dance, and music or a combination thereof. Awards include six hours of creation time per week for approximately 10 weeks in either the Chase Family Dance Studio or the Hoehl Studio Lab and culminate in an informal public showing of the new work in either of the two FlynnArts studios or FlynnSpace. Grants are awarded twice annually.