Coriolanus by William Shakespeare

A soldier comes home, does home welcome him back?

Coriolanus is Shakespeare’s definitive veteran story. Your donations will directly contribute to production costs and help bring this story to the stage.

We are a team of young artists, graduates and students of NYU Tisch School of the Arts, dedicated to bringing to light the veteran’s experience through this play.

Coriolanus explores the themes of combat trauma, war, nationalism, militarism, and family. Through these themes, this company will ask: what does it mean to become a veteran? What are the effects of combat trauma, and what happens to a soldier with no war to fight? Are we complicit in glorifying war? How does proximity to violence alter one’s humanity?

Under the guidance of our dramaturg, the company will bring their experiences of the military, veterans, and other themes of the play into discussion. We make this production more truthful to its mission of investigating the essential veteran’s experience by having everyone’s point of view on it. We will also conduct interviews with veterans and people who know veterans, and these interviews will be utilized in the creative process.

Much like veterans themselves, Coriolanus is often overlooked, rarely being done in comparison to other Shakespeare plays. We want to tell this story to raise awareness for veterans and the experience of soldiers. This story is important, timeless, and necessary.

"Think with thyself / How more unfortunate than all living women / Are we come hither, since at thy sight, which should / Make our eyes flow with joy, hearts dance with comforts, / Constrains them weep and shake with fear and sorrow; / Making the mother, wife and child to see / The son, the husband and the father tearing / His country's bowels out;"

Volumnia, Coriolanus Act 5 Scene 3

Directed by Emerson Helmbrecht

Produced by Melody Fay Browning