Liz Lerman

Created and directed by Liz Lerman

The 150th anniversary of our Civil War offers a potent context for issues that continue to impact our lives. A pioneer in the world of contemporary dance, Liz Lerman’s newest theatrical dance piece explores the experiences of the healers tasked with treating the physical and psychic wounds of battle. Healing Wars is about bodies: what they bear, what they cannot bear, how we hide them when they die, how we patch them up while they live. Healing Wars inquires into the matters of healing in wartime, innovation during stress, and the question of how individuals and societies absorb the pain of war. Developed in residencies across the country, Healing Wars includes video imagery from Gettysburg, Antietam, Harpers Ferry, and in the fMRI labs of the Virginia Tech Carilion Research Institute in Roanoke. The professional ensemble features former Navy Gunners Mate Paul Hurley, who lost a leg above the knee while in service. Lerman presents her singular aesthetic to audiences in this haunting work about how we experience and recover from war.


GO BACKSTAGE

Healing Wars includes two distinct, but intertwined experiences. First is a series of backstage performance-based installations that provide context, followed by the stage performance. The first portion of the event will begin as patrons arrive. Center staff in the Grand Lobby will guide you to the installations, which you will view at your own pace and experience in small groups. The second portion of the event will begin once all patrons are seated in the theatre, at approximately 7:40 p.m. Please note: the backstage experience is integral to Healing Wars. It is not a preshow activity, but rather the first part of the whole work, which is a wholly unique and intimate theatrical experience.



PODCASTS WITH LIZ LERMAN

March 17, 2015
Community Voices: Liz Lerman and Michael Friedlander
Liz Lerman and Michael Friedlander. The intersection of art, science and research. Equal commitment to concert and community. Coming to grips with life events by a research process and sharing it with audience. Urgency of the emerging questions that we want to make art about and with. We can't do it alone. Brains adapt quickly. Neuroscience has evolved to the place where we can begin to ask questions about the really hard stuff: Love, creativity, imagination. Artists interpreting what they experience observing the scientists at work.

March 25, 2015
Community Voices Roundtable: Liz Lerman
Liz Lerman and Healing Wars cast members Gesel Mason and Alli Ross engage in conversation with grad students and faculty. Topics: Interdisciplinarity. Veterans. Addiction to risk, purpose, and love. Rehearsal - keep doing it - building amendments. Constraints. Tools. Healing in uncomfortable spaces. Opportunities to tell our stories to all different kinds of audiences; take ideas, projects, passions; not a dumbing down; putting a narrative on it. Need to be outright agressive about outreach.

March 26, 2015
Trustees Without Borders: Lisa Jo Epstein
Lisa Jo Epstein is artistic director and co-founder of Gas & Electric Arts in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
 

ENGAGEMENT EVENTS
 

During an artist residency at Virginia Tech in 2012, Healing Wars creator and director Liz Lerman engaged with faculty, students, and community members, including researchers at the Virginia Tech Carilion Research Institute. Join us for a conversation between Lerman and Michael J. Friedlander, PhD, executive director of the Virginia Tech Carilion Research Institute, on creative research, scientific research, and their intersections. Co-presented with Community Voices
Cube
Free; registration required through the box office


Friday, March 20, 2015, following the performance
Q&A with Liz Lerman and Healing Wars Artists
Following Healing Wars, interact with Liz Lerman and additional artists in Healing Wars in this question-and-answer discussion.
Anne and Ellen Fife Theatre, Street and Davis Performance Hall
Free