London War Resister Support Group

AWOL: Soldiers' Journeys to War Resistance~ Dramatic Reading/Performance
By Joanna Crowell

Staged Reading/Performance: Produced and Directed by Joanna Crowell
CAST: Adam Langton ~ Michael Ross ~ Joanna Crowell

Friday, July 30 at 7:30 pm, Saturday, July 31, at 7:30 pm, Sunday, August 1, 2010 at 2 pm

KING'S UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, 266 Epworth Ave. London (parking off Epworth)

Dante Lenardon Hall, THEATRE ROOM / LOWER LEVEL-DLO12
LIMITED SEATING, Pay what you can. Please RSVP to AWOLplay@gmail.com to hold a seat.
All proceeds go to The War Resisters Support Campaign

Why do some soldiers disobey orders and leave the military? Is it cowardice? Why do young Americans join the military? How does their training affect them? What do they experience and how do they feel when they enter the theatre of war confronting battle?The reflections and stories of these young men and woman are thoughtful, heart-wrenching, emotional, raw, illuminating and inspiring--they capture the harsh realities of the soldierization process, of war, and the change of heart that can take place in the midst of these realities. THANK YOU TO THE WAR RESISTERS WHO HAVE TRUSTED ME WITH THEIR STORIES!!! ~Joanna

Joanna Crowell will graduate from King’s at UWO in the fall with a Double major honours BA in Social Justice and Peace Studies and Women Studies and Feminist Research.

Conceived as a project in a qualitative methods course taught by Professor Gahad Hamed, the play was completed in the summer as an Independent Studies course

Joanna been acting for more than ten years, and has been the member of numerous theatre companies, including Living The Dream Theatre in Ohio, the Actors' Theatre of South Carolina, The New American Stage Company and the African American Performance Troupe. She toured for a year with "Whispers and Dreams, Voices of Carolina Slave Children" and played six different characters, all lives of actual former slaves. In 1997 she founded Ascension Theatre in Charleston, South Carolina, where she facilitated writing workshops for women, and created a platform for them to perform their stories. She has since performed her own poetry all over the U.S. and parts of Canada. In 2002 she produced, wrote, and starred in her first multi-media one woman show called "Double Dutch, what are you so afraid of? Jump in!" In 2004 Marjory Wentworth, the Poet Laureate of South Carolina, chose her to perform in a PBS special featuring some of S.C.'s best poets. The Sumter paper called her poetry “avant-garde, humorous, touching and rhythmic.” Joanna also named and co-founded a spoken word series at the Sumter Opera, house called Authentic Voices. In September of 2004, Joanna gave birth to by far her greatest work of art, her son Neo Sky.