Following its performance as a part of the 2021 Poetic License: Ritual Festival, Veteran Voices: Rites of Passage is being re-broadcast as a part of AVAFest 2021. Airing through the Veteran Arts and Wellness Roku Channel, audience members can view Rites of Passage on this date through this link, or on their Roku devices, through this channel. 

Despite joining the United States Army, a close-knit family from the Dominican Republic finds that there are few steady steps on the path towards success in America. Seeking respite in a gay bar while stationed in South Korea, two Black soldiers find each other despite the risk of a policy that could cost them their career and force them out to their families. Two women veterans find support in each other and in clay sculpting on their journey toward becoming themselves again after years of training and survival in all parts of their lives.

Two new short poetic plays and a choreopoem by military veterans, interwoven with poems by veterans and a veteran’s sister navigate becoming, and transitioning, through complex rites of passage silenced in American military experiences during and after service.