'Forrest Gump' actor Gary Sinise brings a play on American Afghan veterans to Sioux Falls

The Gary Sinise Foundation National Tour is bringing, "Last Out: Elegy of a Green Beret" to Sioux Falls this week.

The play, featuring Afghan veterans and their families, will be presented at the South Dakota Military Heritage Alliance Theater at three performances: 7 p.m. Friday, and 1 p.m. and 7 p.m. Saturday. The production is free for the veterans.

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Sinise, featured in “Forrest Gump” and “The Green Mile” and the recipient of a Primetime Emmy Award and a Golden Globe, founded the Gary Sinise Foundation in 2011 in support of the nation’s veterans, first responders and their families.

Sinise said he did that because some of his family members from his wife’s side served in Vietnam. While Sinise was getting to know them, in the 1970s and 1980s, he felt compassion for what happened to the veterans at the time.

“They went off to war, and then they came home, and our nation was not supportive,” Sinise said.

He said from his experience, those veterans felt underappreciated, and some of them ended up being spit on. That was why he started supporting them. Sinise reasoned that if an individual signs up to serve their country, they should be supported for that.

“And then it's just, it's just been a snowball effect,” the actor said.

From there, Sinise created his nonprofit, and one of the avenues for exercising support was staging a play written by a group of Vietnam veterans at his Steppenwolf Theater.

“It was a very emotional and moving production,” Sinise said. “It was very powerful, very healing.”

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That gave Sinise an idea for how powerful an instrument in dealing with war traumas theater could be. And when he came across Lt. Col Scott Mann's play performed by a cast of combat veterans and military-family members, he thought they were doing something similar to what his foundation was working on.

“He wrote his own play about his experiences in Afghanistan, and I thought, the synergy between what had happened back in the '80s, and what Scott was doing with his play today was very powerful,” said Sinise. “It was too great to pass up.”

Sinise decided he wanted to support Mann, and the GSF is now sponsoring the tour of the play.

The play is based on Scott's personal experiences. Mann served in Afghanistan, and after the withdrawal of the American troops, he became involved in the Operation Pineapple Express, engaged in evacuating Americans and their allies who were left behind from Afghanistan after it was seized by Taliban.

The play deals with the problems the American military and the members of their families face, including witnessing the death of their friends, experiencing mental health issues and being away from the families back home.

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“We feel that it's got a lot of the same healing components, as did the play that I did back in the '80s for Vietnam veterans,” Sinise said. “We've seen the power that storytelling has, for veterans who are actually sitting in the audience and watching a play that really speaks to their experiences, and it's very powerful.”

Even though the play was filmed, and it is available online, Sinise said watching it in person creates a totally different experience. The play has already performed in Tampa, Florida; Washington, D.C.; Chicago, Illinois and other communities across the country.

“Last Out: Elegy of a Green Beret," which has been performed across the country since 2018, including most recently in San Diego and Phoenix, has reached thousands of audiences by pulling from the experiences of the longest war in American history, "a war fought mostly in the shadows,” reads the press release of the event.

“Col. Mann, who spent 23 years in the military, including 18 of those years as a green beret, believes in the impact of storytelling as a way to help veterans returning to civilian life heal through the arts," the release states.

This article originally appeared on Sioux Falls Argus Leader: Play 'Last Out: Elegy of a Green Beret' coming to Sioux Falls