About Contact! Unload
When veteran Tim Laidler wanted to find a way to promote the work of Veterans Transition Network (VTN), Marv Westwood, professor of Counselling Psychology (now emeritus) introduced him to George Belliveau, PhD’02, a professor of theatre education at UBC. The three then teamed up with Vancouver artist Foster Eastman and submitted a grant application to men’s health charity, Movember Canada, to finance a play about the challenges vets face when they transition back home, based on experiences from vets who had gone through Westwood’s VTP program.
Belliveau, working with grad students and vets, co-developed a script with Graham Lea that expressed the anger, frustration and emotional baggage that vets often face when they come home. Foster Eastman is art director for the production and produced a 162-panel canvas mural representing fallen soldiers to serve as a backdrop.
The result, Contact! Unload, is a gritty, profane, moving account of the traumas experienced by six veterans of the Afghanistan conflict and the therapeutic approach used to overcome them. The vets work through those stories following Westwood’s therapeutic enactment method, to find a place where they can view those experiences without reliving the intensity, and without succumbing to the guilt, sadness and depression that they’ve felt since returning to civilian life.
Read the entire article here.
Media
Contact! Unload
Inside look at Contact! Unload with George Belliveau
Note: These videos contain strong language.