Exit12 Workshops for Veterans and Refugees on the Intrepid

Creative Forces Project - Spring 2023

Summary

Exit12 and the Intrepid Sea, Air, and Space Museum will deliver an 8-week creative writing and choreography workshop bringing together military veterans, their families, and Afghanistan/Iraq refugees.  The participants will create poems, choreography, music, and prose over the 8-weeks, focusing on sharing individual stories with one another.  Exit12 and the Intrepid will publicly present the created works in a full performance on the Intrepid during Fleet Week/Memorial Day Weekend 2023.

Background

The United States has been at war for over 20 years in Afghanistan, and for 13 years in Iraq.  This year the US is finally at a place where we are no longer at war with the Iraq war ending in 2016 and the Afghanistan war ending in September.  Thousands of US military veterans and their families have been forever impacted by these wars.  The end of the wars also brought a quick and decisive end to the collaboration and safety for many Iraq and Afghanistan people who aided the US during the wars.  Serving alongside the US military and their allies as interpreters, with the pullout of US troops, many Iraqi and Afghani locals were faced with threats to their life for their assistance.  Organizations and grassroots veterans groups championed the cause of helping many of the interpreters they worked with out of their countries to safety.  During the Afghanistan withdrawal the calls from veterans, advocating for the rescue of their interpreters from the Taliban, became overwhelming.  Very few interpreters got out.  Fewer made it to the US. Exit12 and the Intrepid are creating an opportunity for their stories to be heard. 

Project

Exit12 aims to bring together veterans, family members, and refugees to tell their stories through Exit12’s creative writing and movement workshop – Movement 2 Contact.  The workshop will be run in New York City on the Intrepid Aircraft Carrier.  A select group of participants will gather for 6-8 weeks and will engage in writing and movement creative workshops.  The writing workshops will frame the topics that the participants will engage with, and then along with a team of Exit12 artists, the writings will be turned into a choreographic stage production that will be performed in front of a public audience during Fleet Week.  Post-performance, the audience, artists, and participants will engage in a dialogue about the human impact of war, amplified by the words, movement, and art of the people who war impacted the most.

Participants

US Military Veterans in Iraq and Afghanistan served amongst and alongside local military and civilian people.  In many cases these locals were valuable assets, providing information, translation and interpretation services, and even military support.  Many service members became close with their interpreters, because they worked so close together for so long.  When the US left Iraq and Afghanistan, veterans knew their interpreters and their families would be in danger, and they started rallying to get them out of the country, and to the US with one of the Special Immigrant Visas (SIV) that the US promised to interpreters.  The problem was, the visas were incredibly hard to obtain, and with the pullout of troops, the paperwork backlog was immense.  Veterans fought hard, stateside, to get their interpreters and their families out, before the Iraqi militias or Taliban in Afghanistan found them.  Many, fortunately, made it to the US, and a few to NYC.

Few, outside of the military community, may have heard this news.  It is our aim to bring these people together again, creatively, to tell their stories so many more civilians can hear.