TAMPA, Fla. -- The latest offering from Stageworks Theatre is a collaboration with Innovocative Theatre, and it's a study of the internal and external trauma of combat veterans, with talkback panels on assisting veterans after the weekend matinees.

• Stageworks Theatre presents 'Ugly Lies the Bone'
• Play a study of internal, external trauma of combat veterans
• Play shows select nights from Aug. 10 - 19
• Talkback panels on assisting veterans after weekend matinees

In the play, “Ugly Lies the Bone,” showing select nights from August 10th through August 19th, main character Jess is just home to Florida after her third tour in Afghanistan.

She’s trying to re-integrate into society. But her physical injuries make it hard to blend in.

"When you realize you are broken forever, it's heartbreaking. It's truly heartbreaking," said Marie-Claude Trembley, the actor portraying Jess in “Ugly Lies the Bone.”

She gets around with the help of a walker, and carries a scar over the right side of her face. She covers her hair because part of it on the right side of her head is missing.

While the physical scars make it impossible to blend in, it’s her mental anguish that truly isolates her. Jess suffers from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.

She returned to Titusville where she sees her ex-boyfriend Stevie who broke up with her instead of living through another deployment and has since married. 

"He, I think, regrets it greatly," Jason Hoolihan, who plays Stevie, said. 

Stevie doesn’t know how to help Jess.

He invites her to the beach to watch the nearby final NASA shuttle launch, as they once did when dating. But she declines and not just because he has a wife—but because sand is a trigger for her PTSD.

Jess may be home, but she is still fighting to get back to herself. Part of her therapy involves virtual reality, and the hope is that is helps Jess to make peace with her traumas.

"I can take all this off and go home and be fine,” she says of her make-up that looks like terrible burn scars on her face, “but some people actually have to deal with this, and they valiantly serve this country, and I want to do right by them," Tremblay said. 

Innovocative Theatre formed in 2017, and is committed to showing works that will provoke and engage the audience into discourse over relevant social issues.

Post matinee panels will focus on a better understanding of PTSD and how the community can better help returning soldiers.