The Communication Arts Department of St Francis College teamed up with the Theater Production Workshop to perform The Antigone Project on Dec. 3. There were two showings of the unique theatrical offering at 4 p.m. and 7 p.m at the Maroney Forum for Arts, Culture & Education in Brooklyn Heights.
The play was commissioned by the Women's Project as a forum to discourse on the idea of Antigone, the archetypal symbol of female protest. The idea was spun off in different settings from contemporary rural Africa to a netherworld totalitarian regime at the beach.
Director Kathryn Grant decided that the students would have the opportunity to explore different milieus and the fact that there were parts for everybody sealed the deal.
The result was a play that traverses multiple genres using comedy, pathos, satire and elements of Greek tragedy. Below is a two-minute feeler of how it felt to be there on the occasion.

Stephen Konyha looked anxious as he sat in a large room that resembled an art gallery with paintings on the walls and relaxing instrumental music wafting through it. On closer inspection, the cause of his angst became clear – the tiny needles protruding from both ears.

The elderly Konyha said he had never tried ear acupuncture before - he had heard about it but he had never seriously considered getting it done.

He was at the Brooklyn Vet Center for the ‘Healing Day’ that offered holistic stress management services to veterans. He was not alone - there were several veterans trying out body therapies like chair massage and healing hands as well as energy treatments like Reiki and chi gong exercises.

Siobhan J. Dolan, a mental health nurse and acupuncture detoxification specialist, offers the ear acupuncture wellness protocol every Wednesday at the Vet Center.

Dolan is the founder of Beyond Combat, a small organization aimed at providing holistic remedies to military personnel and their families. Post-9/11, Dolan ran a similar program at a downtown hospital and after six years, she decided to offer the services to the military community.

Konyha was a treatment first-timer and couldn’t quite describe how it felt to have needles in different parts of his earlobes. “No pain. There was a bit when she put them in,” he said.

Holistic medicine is catching on with veterans, said Konyha. He added that he knew many veterans who were taking advantage of touch and music therapy.

Konyha had been an investigation specialist in South Korea tasked with looking into the conduct of Army officers. Among other roles, he now serves as co-chairman of the VISN 3 Veterans Advisory Council for Mental Health & Behavioral Science at the Department of Veteran Affairs.

“Some guys do acupuncture,” said Konyha. “Some of them say it’s been useful. From what I’ve seen at other centers, there is a demand for it.”

“What often happens after seeing traumatic events is that a portion of the brain has a hard time verbalizing what one saw,” said Dolan. “Some people experience the stress all over again by speaking. With the nonverbal modalities like this, what we found was that it worked because it didn’t put pressure on the person to have to speak and get re-traumatized.”

Dolan’s hospital program provided around 40,000 acupuncture treatments for the downtown community. “We saw people become more relaxed - like firefighters and rescue and recovery personnel,” said Dolan. “And we saw people coming in saying that they slept better.”

The readjustment counseling services team leader at the Vet Center, Kevin O’Brien, said, “What we’re trying to do here is we’re trying to incorporate holistic things, which help people recognize that, you know, stress is something that affects everybody, not just veterans.”

O’Brien added, “It’s a way of helping to normalize veterans and to show our appreciation for everything that they do.”

And veterans seem to be responding. “I find it comforting. It puts me to sleep,” said Eric R. Fludd, 33, who joined the Army twice for two-year stints. He was in Afghanistan for two months and was discharged in 2003. Fludd has been coming to the Vet Center for close to five years. “I wish I could have a massage every day,” he said.

Dolan said providing optimal medicine meant you pulled from both traditional and holistic. “Fortunately, O’Brien thinks the same thing,” said Dolan. “We did it as a pilot project and it’s working well – so it just continued.”