“And the play helped me, definitely, because I could relate to the characters,” Weekes said. “When soldiers come home from war, you never know what to expect. They might get violent. That was my biggest fear.
“We at home might not have been on the battlefield, but it sure feels like it,” she said.
Sergeant 1st Class Tony Gonzalez, an Iraq combat veteran from Brooklyn who was on the panel, recalled that post-traumatic stress disorder was rarely discussed when he first joined the Army. He described his own pain after his platoon captain was killed and he went to pay respects to the man’s wife, also a friend and member of the military.
And he praised the use of theater to help spotlight trauma.
“I’ve been Ajax,” he said. “I’ve spoken to Ajax.”
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