OHare Denis - An Iliad

CAUTION: Professionals and amateurs are hereby warned that all materials in this book, being fully protected under the copyright laws of the United States, the British Empire including the Dominion of Canada, and all other countries of the Copyright Union, are subject to royalty. All rights, including professional, amateur, motion picture, recitation, lecturing, public reading, radio and television broadcasting, and the rights of translation into foreign languages, are strictly reserved. The stock and amateur performance rights in the English language throughout the United States, and its territories and possessions, Canada, and the Open Market are controlled by Dramatists Play Service, Inc. No professional or nonprofessional performances of the plays herein (excluding first class professional performance) may be given without obtaining in advance the written permission. Inquiries concerning all other rights should be addressed to Val Day, ICM Partners, 730 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10019.

This edition first published in the United States and the United Kingdom in 2014 by Overlook Duckworth, Peter Mayer Publishers, Inc.

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Copyright 2014 Lisa Peterson and Denis OHare

Translation 1990 Robert Fagles,
used by permission of Penguin Books

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a review written for inclusion in a magazine, newspaper, or broadcast.

ISBN: 978-1-4683-0808-2

ISBN: 978-1-4683-1192-1 (e-book)

Winner of the Obie Award, the Lucille Lortel Award, five Craig Noel

Awards (San Diego), the Joseph Jefferson Award (Chicago),

the Gregory Award (Seattle), the Elliot Norton Award (Boston) and

Drama Desk nominations for Music and Solo Performance

Smartly conceived and impressively executed, An Iliad relates an age-old story that resonates with tragic meaning today.

M ICHAEL S OMMERS , The New York Times

Absolutely riveting.

R OBERT H URWITT , San Francisco Chronicle

Drawing on the muscular translation by Robert Fagles, Mr. OHare and Ms. Peterson have telescoped the mighty expanses of Homers great poem into an evening that scales the conflict of the Trojan War down to an intimate solo show illuminating both the heroism and the horror of warfare.

C HARLES I SHERWOOD , The New York Times

An Iliad is pure theater: shocking, glorious, primal and deeply satisfying.

D AVID C OTE , Time Out New York

In a mesmerizing play Lisa Peterson and Denis OHare have condensed the 24-book poem into 100 intelligent, emotional minutes a wrenching theatrical experience.

J ENNIFER F ARRAR , Associated Press

Listening to An Iliad in a manner that could be breathtakingly close to the way its first audiences heard and saw it is a treat too good to miss.

D AVID F INKLE , The Huffington Post

The show is a sweeping, visceral theatrical event commands attention from start to finish.

A NDY P ROPST , TheaterMania

A transformative act of theatrical magic.

B OB V ERINI , Variety

A starkly powerful experience The vernacular language mixed in with the soaring poetry of An Iliad collapses any sense of comfortable distance we may feel.

D ON A UCOIN , The Boston Globe

An Iliad is unquestionably a victory of the theatrical imagination The rhetoric soars for moments with battlefield exploits but then is brought back down to our contemporary idiom to close the gap between this ancient mythological world and our own.

C HARLES M C N ULTY , Los Angeles Times

This is poetry as it was meant to be experienced, primal and raw, thrilling and transcendent.

J ENNY L OWER , LA Weekly

The act of combat has never been more piercingly described (not even by Tolstoy or Mailer ), nor its qualities of rage, savagery, and comradeship more intensely conveyed.

M YRON M EISEL , The Hollywood Reporter

This is a formidably powerful piece of solo theater that evokes the rubble of history and of lessons mankind consistently fails to learn.

C HRIS J ONES , Chicago Tribune

Explosive, altogether breathtaking Brilliantly meshes past and present calamity, with touches of the most caustic dark humor suddenly shifting into unimaginable pathos.

H EDY W EISS , Chicago Sun-Times

Humor is an invaluable tool in this riveting one-actor adaptation of Homers epic poem, easing the audience into the Poets tale before he takes them on a devastating tour of the Trojan battlefield.

O LIVER S AVA , Time Out Chicago

An Iliad demands a thinking audience.

C ATEY S ULLIVAN , Chicago Theater Beat

An Iliad tells the whole story in an artfully edited form that not only hits all the important plot points and set pieces but renders them with a deep consciousness of their ironies, agonies, subtleties, and implications.

T ONY A DLER , Chicago Reader

A triumph of theater.

L AWRENCE B OMMER , Chicago Stage Style

OHare and Peterson mingle written and spoken ancient language with modern day grocery line descriptions. The that-was-then and this-is-still-how-it-is revelation is gut-punching.

K ATY W ALSH , Chicago Now

Peterson and OHare illuminate, far better than any mere film, the guts and passionthe almost hallucinatory high of battle and that camaraderie between soldiers that noncombatants cannot comprehend.

G RAYDON R OYCE , Minneapolis Star Tribune

An Iliad strips the varnish and the romance from war, offering a crystalline account of the horrors, the follies and the costs of armed conflict.

D OMINIC P. P APATOLA , St. Paul Pioneer Press

How incredibly powerful this work of theatre is

V AN B ADHAM , The Guardian

A breathtaking tour-de-force that begs the question: Has anything really changed since the Trojan War?

S TEPHEN H OUSE , AussieTheatre.com

In the inspired hands of Denis OHare and Lisa Peterson, who have adapted Homers masterpiece to encompass the war-glutted centuries that followed the Trojan campaign, we have a chance to hear the story told in such a way it feels as though we have never heard it before.

E LSPETH S ANDYS , New Zealand Listener

LISA PETERSON is an Obie-award winning director whose other compositions include a musical adaptation of Virginia Woolfs The Waves, with music by David Bucknam (New York Theater Workshop). In addition to many classic plays, Lisa has directed the premieres of new works by Donald Margulies, Tony Kushner, Beth Henley, Naomi Wallace, Jose Rivera, and others at theaters including NYTW (OBIE for directing Caryl Churchills