WAR: THEN AND NOW
An Iliad

Adapted by Lisa Peterson and Denis O’Hare Based on Homer’s “The Iliad”, translated by Robert Fagles
Sponsor DR Struck Landscape Nursery

Set in the present, a lone figure onstage, The Poet recalls the nobility, savagery, and valor of Trojan War battles and warriors, while exploring the human costs of war through the centuries. This tour-de-force adaptation of Homer’s classic poem weaves humanity’s unshakable attraction to warfare with the music of the muses, capturing the contradictory conditions of glory and violence with spellbinding modernity.

Schedule

Thursday, September 2, 7:30 p.m. (Preview)
Friday, September 3, 7:30 p.m. (Opening)
Saturday, September 4, 7:30 p.m. 
Sunday, September 5, 1:00 p.m. 
Wednesday, September 8, 7:30 p.m. 
Friday, September 10, 7:30 p.m.
Saturday, September 11, 1:00 p.m.
Saturday, September 11, 7:30 p.m.
Production Team


Bill Van Horn
Director
Jim Alexander
Set Designer

Erin Fauble
Lighting Designer
Michelle Handley
Costume Designer
Rew Tippin
Sound Designer
 

Cast

                                                                                                                Mark S. Cartier
                                                                                                                   The Poet

From the Director

The story of “The Iliad” is embedded in our souls. It is as primal as Genesis.

This play, An Iliad, takes place Now. The place is Here.

The Poet has been travelling from town to town for countless years; from theatre, to barroom, to public square—wherever there is a crowd that will hear his story. Usually, the place the crowd has gathered is a space that has recently experienced war and social unrest, or will experience it in the near future. His arrival is a surprise. His mission: to tell his story. He hopes that keeps the crowd in their seats and the “management” from kicking him out. This is the latest place he has found to tell his story. That is what he does. Tell the story of a war.

Who is the Poet? Is he Homer? Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe he is telling a story that has been passed down to him over thousands of years. Maybe he is the originator of this story; as close to an eyewitness to The Trojan War as we can possibly get. The question of Homer’s identity is very much undetermined. Some scholars think he was an actual person who developed his stories through repeated public recitation. Others think “Homer” is a multigenerational conglomerate of storytellers and poets whose collected efforts, over a series of decades, have given us the stories of “The Iliad” and “The Odyssey” which we know today.

“The true hero, the true subject, the true center of the Iliad, is force. Force as man’s instrument, force as man’s master, force before which human flesh shrinks back. The human soul, in this poem is shown always in its relation to force: swept away, blinded by the force it thinks it can direct, bent under the pressure of the force to which it is subjected.”

 –Simone Weil