“The Veterans Play Project” opens this week, presented by Mixed Blood in partnership with Bedlam Theatre and the Minnesota Humanities Center. From June 2012 to March 2013, artists of Footprints Collective asked local veterans of all stripes – of any ability or disability, any race, age, gender or cultural background – to share their experiences in community story circles and interviews across the state. And the resulting play acts as a distillation of those stories, drawn from the raw material of first-hand narratives offered by an inter-generational assortment of more than 100 men and women in all branches of military service, from overseas conflicts in World War II, Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq to time spent in domestic service.

Indeed, veterans’ voices have been the throughline of the project from conception to performance: the cast, who’ll perform the work at Fort Snelling Base Camp later this week, consists of 22 actors and musicians, including 15 veterans and active military personnel. Set in the fictional Midwestern town of Smedley, this play weaves together stories of new recruits, seasoned veterans and civilian residents (representative of a broad range of viewpoints and opinions about our nations’ various conflicts) who are trying to bridge their differences and come together to find a way to best honor the memory of those who’ve served in their community.

In a statement articulating the motivations behind the “The Veterans Play Project,” director Leah Cooper writes:

When I talk to vets, I hear that serving, going away, giving your life over to service, changes you in powerful ways, and it can be difficult to process all those changes in yourself when you get home, especially when you encounter a civilian population that largely doesn’t understand what you’ve been through and why. .. I’m making this play because I think the process of collaborating together on a team, taking real stories and turning them into a powerful theatrical experience can be another kind of service; a way of building better understanding between vets and civilians, a way of processing complicated experiences in a safe, supportive, creative, fun environment; and of taking people on a journey that can bring all of us closer together.