November 18, 2005, Section: Local, Page Number: 5

Former soldier becomes actor-poet Carnes

performs his one‑man show

By Jana Peterson Family Living Editor

POCATELLO — Solo performer Kenny Carnes once was an attack helicopter pilot in the U.S. Army. Now he’s a poet/actor. No, Carnes hasn’t renounced his career as a soldier to protest for peace across the nation. Instead he’s attempting to address the different pieces of himself — G.I. Joe, Corporate Joe, and Compassionate Joe, among others — and those same pieces of American society through his one-man show, "War, Peace and the Anatomy of Being Human." He performed that show at the Idaho State University ballroom Thursday night. It’s a show born out of conflict. "My sense was frustration," he said, discussing the dichotomy of being a soldier and an actor. "I could have medicated that," he laughs, "but I chose to live with (the tension) instead of going to war with it. It came out in a poetic dramatic piece." His show starts with a Mark Twain quote: "I am not an American, I am the American." Twain wrote that line at the time of the American Civil War. "It’s a comment on where we’re at as Americans, as a collective," Carnes said. "We’re at a didactic civil war now, of ideology. But it was also important to put in the context of a creative acting piece because I held that within me ... the energy and logic of a warrior, the passion of the artist/poet." In his show Carnes uses poetry and prose voiced by different characters. One moment he’s a peace protester, drawing the audience in with his argument, the next he’s a general, logically explaining the need to go to war. He talks to a girl named Innocence, who died at the World Trade Center, and finally comes to peace as a soldier by resolving to be a peace officer when he returns from war. Then shots ring out. The curtains close. Cameron Homer, ISU issues and speaker chair, said he was intrigued by the fact that Carnes was not advocating a particular stance, but instead invites people to different perspectives of the war. That doesn’t mean Carnes has any answers for the current war or any previous ones. Nor was he offering any easy answers to his audience last night. That’s never his intention. Like the ancient Greeks who used theater as a precursor to Socratic dialogue, Carnes wants his performance to spark intelligent discussion.

"People want me to tell them what’s right or wrong — that’s not where I’m at," Carnes said in an interview before the show Thursday. "Ultimately, what you get from my show is contemplation. You might get closure to the story, but wrestling (with the issue). It’s no passive entertainment.