WARREN, Ohio – Jaymes Poling wrote and launched the “Modern Warrior Live” show and has starred in close to 200 episodes of it.
The show details his Army service in battle-torn Afghanistan and his struggle to return to everyday life when he came back to Ohio. It connects with other warriors, steering them to organizations who can help.
But despite all of his performances, Poling has never played in his hometown – Warren, Ohio.
That will change this year, when “Modern Warrior Live” plays the Robins Theatre at 7 p.m. Nov. 11, which is Veterans Day. Tickets are free and can be obtained in advance at RobinsTheatre.com and the theater’s box office, 160 E. Market St., downtown.
“Modern Warrior Live” is a multimedia show in which Poling shares his life story. It also has some actors and live music custom-made and performed by Dominic Farinacci, a Cleveland-based jazz artist.
Poling is excited to do the show in Warren.
“We’ve done at least 175 shows by now, and it’s nice to be able to come home,” he says. “I’ve had so many teachers, friends and family travel to see shows.”
The production had already been staged in Cleveland and Akron and across the country.
Poling grew up partially on Warren’s east side, where his father used to have a used car lot.
He enlisted in the U.S. Army’s 82nd Airborne Division after graduating from LaBrae High School and began basic training at Fort Bragg in the summer of 2005. During his eight years with the 82nd, he spent three years fighting in Afghanistan as a machine gunner and squad leader.
After leaving the service in 2013, he returned to the U.S. and moved to the Cleveland area, where he started taking finance classes at Cuyahoga Community College and John Carroll University.
He was in college when his talent for explaining his story came to light – even though he had never written his life story and had no previous theater instruction.
One of his first assignments for an English class was to write a memoir – a portion of which is still part of “Modern Warrior Live.”
His professor was so impressed with it that she shared it with the campus veterans program.
“That’s how I first started getting asked to speak and to sit on panels,” Poling recalls.
Today, the show – which was launched around 2018 – is his livelihood.
Coming Home
Bringing it to Warren was the work of Herm Breuer, a Trumbull County resident and former Army serviceman who was wounded in Iraq in 2004.
He was heading up a national servicemen’s group gathering in Cleveland when he saw a rehearsal of “Modern Warrior Live.” A brief moment of the show caught his attention.
“On the screen behind him on stage there flashed a letter that he got from his mom and dad while he was in Afghanistan and the return address said Warren, Ohio,” Breuer says. “I thought, holy cow, this kid’s from Warren. I didn’t know that. It’s how I first started to have a conversation with him.”
Breuer has started a nonprofit, Cover Down Fund, to help servicemen get access to essential services.
He quickly decided that he needed to bring “Modern Warrior Live” to Warren as part of its effort.
A veterans consultant for the U.S. Department of Defense, Breuer was formerly the director of veterans services in Trumbull County for 19 years and is well-versed in what local vets need.
His Own Story
When Poling wrote his story, he wasn’t thinking that it would one day become a traveling production.
“My initial thought was to write something that my more stubborn friends with similar experiences could not just relate to, but hopefully feel a little less isolated by,” he says. “I wanted to highlight the culture and the mentality of the people that fight. And though I was speaking to the people I served with, I wanted to try and extend an olive branch and bring civilians on board and get them familiarized with what our world is like. From there, you talk about fighting, about losing a friend.”
The time he spent switching from a combat veteran to an Ohio citizen is when his difficulties began.
“Ultimately, I got to the point where I felt numb to everything, and I found myself searching for feeling anywhere,” he recalls. “A lot of times it was just chasing adrenaline. And in doing that, there were a lot of self-destructive behaviors that I leaned into.”
While attending John Carroll, Poling met Farinacci, a trumpet player and band leader. Farinacci put together the music based on Poling’s words and is now a business partner who performs in all “Modern Warrior” shows.
In those days, Poling felt depressed as he started to remember things from Afghanistan that he had been suppressing.
“I found myself coming into the full swing of the post-traumatic stress disorder awareness campaign, which I think is beneficial,” he says.
“It felt prescriptive at a time when I was trying to find my footing in the civilian world.”
The help he received came from people aware of the intricacies of post-traumatic stress disorder. Poling learned that getting better was the same challenge, whether you’ve been to war or not.
The post-traumatic stress campaign also got him to understand the “leadership experience” he received at a young age by joining the Army.
“I got to travel the world,” he says. “I got perspective from spending years in rural Afghanistan and seeing humanity around the world in a different way. Ultimately, all of that stuff made me stronger. And at the end of the day, the message I wanted to share with the show is that the experiences we go through can be challenging … but they can become assets if you’re willing to lean into them and work through them in the right way. We wanted that message to be central to the show.”
One lesson that all servicemen learn is the “I can tackle anything” mentality. It can obstruct mental health progress if not tempered, but Poling learned to use it in starting “Modern Warrior Live.”
Before every performance, Poling’s group brings in local organizations that are there to help veterans after the show.
Breuer, who was also once the president of the National Association of County Veteran Service Officers, will assemble the helpers for the Robins Theatre show.
Powerful Message
Poling’s first take on the show was that it would be him sharing his experiences, which would allow veterans to reframe their own ordeals.
But he has been surprised with how hard it affects them.
“A lot of veterans come up to me afterwards and say, ‘With a couple tweaks, that’s my story – the same struggles and the same experiences.’ And that’s when we’re able to connect people who are still in a rough spot to the resources and get them to a better place,” he says.
One surprise has been the children of World War II veterans who tell him after shows that they see their childhood family dinners in a different light.
“They now see the person that they love through the lens of me, sharing my experience, and it opens conversation,” he says. “It builds connectivity between the veteran and those who feel they’re on the outside looking in.”
Breuer says many combat veterans struggle to feel normal when they return home.
“The suicide rate among veterans is 22 a day, and… a lot of those individuals are not connected to any programs of support, because when they came home, they disconnected and they never got reconnected,” he says.
That feeling of a veteran being alone also comes through in “Modern Warrior Live,” he says.
Pictured at top: Modern Warrior Live on stage.