By Mikayla van Loon
The Vietnam veterans storytelling performance, Forgotten Heroes, is four months away from coming to the live stage at Burrinja and those involved are immersing themselves in the stories to bring the show to life.
Program director and mastermind behind the project, Cath Russell started creating the songs for the live performance three years ago based on the stories shared with her at the time.
Now just months out from sharing the performance, Cath, actor Stephen Hall and singer Carl Pannuzzo have organised a series of roundtable discussions with Vietnam veterans, the next at Mount Evelyn RSL on 18 June.
As a performer, Carl said very much like acting, being able to immerse yourself in the story itself will be invaluable to the presentation.
“If I get a chance to be able to really listen and observe, perhaps ask questions, reflect, then I can also get a sense of getting out of myself a little bit,” he said.
“That enables me to think about not just the meaning of the song [but] the idea is, if I were really them, singing that song, I might have the voice and the capacity to express it where they may not but it’s their experience and their mind. Something which in reality, I have no ability to imagine.”
Carl said by hearing the experiences of Vietnam veterans, he hopes he can better communicate to the audience the powerful nature of what he has heard in the process.
“It’s the only way to get deeper and to tell the story in an even more nuanced way and to affect people on more micro levels. That’s the point of art, to disturb the comfortable and comfort the disturbed.
“There’s only so much that someone outside of that experience can recreate with their own imagination.”
This performance aims to remember the sacrifices of the men who served in Vietnam, something Carl said he hopes evokes a great sense of empathy when people “feel the sounds and the rhythm that illustrate the words.”
It’s those human emotions the team of performers at the Dandenong Ranges Music Council want to inspire.
While understanding that for some, speaking about Vietnam could be traumatising, Forgotten Heroes is about giving Vietnam veterans the same respect and opportunity to share their stories as other veterans.
“If it’s the last chance that they can get to be seen or recognised, within all healing modalities, if you look into modern therapy, the idea to be acknowledged, is really tantamount to healing,” Carl said.
Seeing the community of younger veterans, particularly those who fought in Afghanistan, join and relate to those who fought in Vietnam, Cath said the similarities between them are uncanny.
“The name Forgotten Heroes is so potent in this generation as well,” she said.
As our Vietnam veterans grow older, Cath said the necessity to tell their stories now has never been more essential.
“Having worked with vets for a few years and seeing them get more frail, it makes this all the more important,” she said.
On a personal level, Carl said “it’s the closest that I can come to honouring them” and he is looking forward to not only hearing the experiences of those at Mount Evelyn RSL but also being the custodian of the stories while on stage at Burrinja.
The performance at Burrinja will be held on Saturday 24 September in the Lyrebird Room.
