An Iliad Read online

  An Iliad was produced at New York Theater Workshop (James C. Nicola, Artistic Director; William Russo, Managing Director) in New York City, opening on March 7, 2012. It was directed by Lisa Peterson; the set design was by Rachel Hauck; the costume design was by Marina Draghici; the lighting design was by Scott Zielinski; the original music and sound design were by Mark Bennett; and the production stage manager was Donald Fried. The production featured Brian Ellingsen as The Musician and Denis O’Hare and Stephen Spinella as The Poet on alternate nights.

  Opening night at New York Theatre Workshop, February 2012. From left to right: Stephen Spinella, Marina Draghici, Denis O’Hare, Lisa Peterson, Mark Bennett, Brian Ellingsen, Rachel Hauck.

  Hans Altwies, Seattle Repertory Theatre, 2010.

  PHOTO: CHRIS BENNION

  Denis in reading at Sundance Institute, July 2010.

  PHOTO: FRED HAYES/COURTESY OF SUNDANCE INSTITUTE

  CHARACTERS

  THE POET

  PART ONE

  THE ARMIES GATHER

  Denis O’Hare.

  PHOTO: JOAN MARCUS

  An empty space. Dim light. Suddenly, a door in the back wall opens and a MAN enters. He’s wearing an old coat, a hat pulled down over his eyes, and carrying a suitcase. There is something ancient about him, but it may just be that he looks weary, as if he’s been traveling for a very long time. He walks toward us, puts down the suitcase. He squints out at us, taking us in. Hesitates, not entirely sure if he’s in the right place.

  The MAN shakes his head, closes his eyes, gathers his energy, and begins:

  POET

  [Translation:

  Rage—Goddess, sing the rage of Peleus’ son Achilles, murderous, doomed, that cost the Acheans countless losses, hurling down to the House of Death so many sturdy souls, great fighters’ souls—]

  (He stops, lost. He looks out at us, embarrassed. He shuffles down to the edge of the stage, and peers out into the dark. He squints and examines the audience.)

  Back then, oh I could sing it. For days and nights. On and on, every battle, every old digression, I would sing and sing … in Mycenae once I sang for a year—you don’t believe me? In Babylon, I sang it differently, but the crowds came … in Alexandria I started to notice a few empty seats, but still I sang it. Shorter though—three or four days. Know where it went down really well? Gaul, something about those people, they had a real taste for it—of course they were hard to control, they used to get up on tables and sing along, they threatened to take the whole thing over, went outside, screaming, building fires, terrible.

  Every time I sing this song, I hope it’s the last time.

  (With Homeric intensity.) Ohhh, sing to me now. Uhhh, you muses. In the halls of Olympus … you are goddesses! You are everywhere! You know everything! All we hear is the distant ring of glory … (Hopefully.) Sing!

  (Suddenly changing subject—a diversion.) You know, in the old days, we’d be in a tavern, or a bar, I guess you would say. It was so much easier to talk about these horrors in a bar … (He takes off his hat and looks toward the suitcase.) This is the story of the Trojan War. And two great fighters—Achilles and Hector—

  (Imploring.) Ohhhhh … Muses …

  (He concentrates very hard, searching his memory and asking the Muses to help. He closes his eyes.)

  (Waits. Then, in a burst of inspiration, he squeezes out six lines of dactylic hexameter.)

  RAGE!

  Goddess, sing the rage of Peleus’ son Achilles,

  Murderous, doomed, that cost the Achaeans countless losses,

  Hurling down to the House of Death so many sturdy souls,

  Great fighters’ souls, but made their bodies carrion,

  Feasts for the dogs and birds …

  What drove them to fight with such a fury?

  Ohhh … the gods, of course … um … pride, honor, jealousy … Aphrodite … some game or other, an apple, Helen being more beautiful than somebody—it doesn’t matter. The point is, Helen’s been stolen, and the Greeks have to get her back.

  (Tired by the idea of it.) Huhhh. It’s always something, isn’t it …?

  But—it’s a good story. I—I remember a lot of it, I remember a lot of it.

  Imagine a beach—rocky, jagged—and oh about a mile and a half inland imagine a city, with stone ramparts protecting it. This city was called Troy, and from the walls of this city Hector can see the water, down by the beach, and in that water, there are hundreds of ships. It is crowded with all kinds of Greek ships. This is where my story takes place. Ages ago.

  (With Homeric intensity.) Who were the captains of those Greek ships? Who were the captains of Achaea? Ahhhhh! The mass of troops I could never tally, I could, I could, if … if I had ten tongues in ten mouths … if, if, if, if I, if I had a heart made of me bronze. (He likes that.) Yes! A heart made of me bronze. And if I could remember the names, that is—if I could actually remember everybody.

  Sing! Sing in memory

  All who gathered under Troy …

  The List of Ships … the numbers of men on those ships … Muses?

  (No answer from the Muses. He concentrates very hard—willing his memory to wake up—and slowly at first, he calls up the list of ships.)

  Here goes:

  First came the Boeotian units led by Lay-i-tus and Pen-e-lay-os:

  Ar-se-si-lay-us and Proth-o-ee-nor and Clonius shared command

  Of the armed men who lived in Hyria, rocky Aulis …

  (Grasping, he skips ahead.) Thespia and Gray-uh, the dancing rings of My-ka-less-us,

  Men who lived round Harma, Il-e-si-on and Er-y-three …

  (Skips ahead again.) Co-pae, Eu-tree-sis and Thisbe thronged with doves—

  Ah, it’s coming back to me, yes (He picks up the pace …)

  Fighters from Coronea, Haleartus deep in meadows,

  And the men who held Plataea and lived in Glisas,

  Men who held the rough-hewn gates of Lower Thebes,

  On-kee-stus the holy, Poseidon’s sun-filled grove,

  Men from the town of Arne green with vineyards …

  (He stops himself.) Ah, that’s right, you don’t know any of these places … but these names—these names mean something to me. And I knew these boys …

  The point is, on all these ships, are boys from every small town in Ohio, from farmlands, from fishing villages … the boys of Nebraska and South Dakota … the twangy boys of Memphis … the boys of San Diego, Palo Alto, Berkeley, Antelope Valley … You can imagine, you can imagine, you know, um … there are soldiers from Kansas. There are soldiers from Lawrence, Kansas.* There are soldiers from Springfield, Illinois. Evanston, Illinois. Chicago, Illinois. Buffalo, New York. Cooperstown, New York. Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island, uh, the Bronx, South Bronx. You have soldiers from Florida, from the Panhandle, with its snake charmers and evangelists, from the Okeechobee. You have soldiers from Miami who speak Spanish, Miami who speak French, Miami who speak English. You have Puerto Rican soldiers. You have soldiers from Texas, from the flatland, from Dallas, from Plano, from Houston. There are soldiers from Tennessee, from western Tennessee, from the mountains, from the mountains in Virginia, the mountains in Seattle. From Flint, Michigan, from Benton Harbor, from—from—from—in the thumb, from Escanaba, you know what I mean? … That’s it. That’s it.

  You get the point.

  Known and unknown.

  We’re talking tens of thousands of men, emptied out of the Greek islands.

  Picture these men, these ships, so many ships.

  (He begins to count the ships as he sees them in his mind’s-eye, drawing attention to his favorite commanders.) 50, 40, 40, 40, 50, 80, 100—Agamemnon—60, 40, 40, 12—Odysseus—80, 30, 50—Achilles—11, 40, 30—these are ships I’m counting, not men—40, 40, 90—Nestor … that’s, how many, uhhhhh, hundreds and hundreds of ships …

  That’s 120 men on each ship … tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of Greek men. Do you see?

  (Silence.)

 
; So here we are—

  Nine years.

  (Beat.) Oh please … O Muses … don’t make me do this alone. (No answer.) Nine years.

  Fighting on and off, fighting to the wall and back. Greeks win one day, Trojans win the next, like a game of tug-of-war, and nothing to show for it but exhaustion, poverty, and loneliness.

  What was it like? Ah, it was a pain. It was awful. It was, it was, it was hot. How about that? It was hot. How can I—?

  Nine years. So for—so you left home when your baby was one, you come back and your baby is ten. You left your baby was one, you come back your baby is dead. You come back your—your wife is dead. You come back your wife is fat. You come back your wife has had three affairs and two more kids. “Uh, hi honey, y-uhhhhh, don’t get mad, don’t get mad.” You know, or you come back, and the farm is ruined. Or there’s been a war and you’re no longer Greek. You’re now Diocletian or whatever it is—you’re Spartan now. They came and took over, while you were hanging out at Troy, and you have no title to your land anymore. Um, your father died while you were gone. You know, oh no (gasp) we don’t wear those leggings anymore, we stopped wearing them like that a long time ago …

  And so, you can imagine, after nine years of this, well, they want to go home. They’ve forgotten why they’re fighting.

  —But what humiliation it would be

  To hold out so long, then sail home empty handed.

  How do you know when you’ve won? You know, someone said, uh how do you ask uh a person to be the last man to die for a, for a—a losing cause and I, I’m paraphrasing but the idea being, you’re in the supermarket line, and you’ve been there for twenty minutes and the other line’s moving faster. Do you switch lines now? No, goddamn it, I’ve been here for twenty minutes, I’m gonna wait in this line, I don’t care if I wait. And look—I’m not leaving ’cuz otherwise I’ve wasted my time.

  Courage, my friends, hold out a little longer …

  Stephen Spinella and Denis O’Hare in front of New York Theatre Workshop, March 2012.

  PART TWO

  ACHILLES

  Stephen Spinella, NYTW, 2012.

  PHOTO: JOAN MARCUS

  POET Now this whole time, of course, the gods were watching. Up on Mount Olympus. And some of them cheered on the Greeks—“Achilles!” And some of them cheered on the Trojans—“Hector!” Like sports fans. And really, back then, this was their only entertainment, they were addicted to it, they couldn’t allow it to end, and so they’d swoop down and pinch and prod and whisper, just to make sure the battles kept raging. Ah, the old gods. You remember Zeus? And his wife, Hera? Apollo? Athena? (Looking out at us.) No? Well, they haven’t been around.

  (He opens the suitcase, takes out a bottle, pours.)

  Where do the old gods go? That’s a song. (Sings.) “Where do the old gods go when they die?” I don’t know. There’s one in the gin bottle, there’s one in the vodka bottle … Spirits. Oh look, Athena in the … she’s in the tequila. (Giggling.) Yeah. Athena tequila. (Contemplating the bottle—enjoying the mystery.) Gods never die. They change. They, they, they burrow inside us … They become us, they become our impulses. (He seems to call on the audience.) Lust? Aphrodite. Mischief? Hermes. A good idea? Athena …

  Athena tequila. Ah very good. (Another drink.)

  Oh, the things the gods could do to us.

  (Distant music, so faint that we’re not sure if it’s really there.)

  Muses?!

  (Suddenly a Muse appears and the world is full of sound and light. This could mean recorded music, or a live musician, but however it happens, THE POET’s world changes completely.)

  Nine years in. And we’re all camped out on that beach. Bad enough. Only now it’s night and men are suddenly getting VERY sick. One minute they’re polishing their boots, the next they’re choking on black blood. Down the beach, there’s a massive fire burning, and the fire is not wood, it’s corpses, they’re burning the corpses of men and mules and dogs, they’ve all been infected by plague. What is going on?

  I’ll tell you: we’ve angered the gods. Agamemnon, our leader, our commander, has taken as the spoils of war this girl—gorgeous, fifteen years old—and she happens to be the daughter of a priest, a priest of Apollo.

  The old man comes to Agamemnon with a cart piled high: “Please take these gifts, this ransom. Just give me back my daughter.” Agamemnon says no. The priest offers to pray for the Greeks if only he’ll give him his daughter back. Agamemnon says no. All of the Greek commanders come to Agamemnon and they beg him to give her back. Agamemnon says no.

  The priest is heartsick, he goes to Apollo and Apollo gets mad.

  Ever seen an angry god? (Shakes his head.) Apollo takes these arrows, and he covers the tips in sickness, in plague. Nasty stuff.

  The arrows clanged at his back as the god quaked with rage,

  Over against the ships he dropped to a knee, let fly a shaft

  And a terrifying clash rang out from the great silver bow—

  (THE POET shoots a plague arrow, and another, and another.) TUNG!! TUNG!! TUNG!!

  Infection. Disease. Death.

  There’s only one way to end the plague: Agamemnon has to give the girl back.

  AGAMEMNON

  I won’t give up the girl!

  POET He’s the commander, no one’s going to tell him what to do. So the Greeks call a grand assembly. Allll the tribes, allll the factions, allll the warriors gather and

  the meeting grounds shook,

  everybody buzzing like, like bees, you know? They’re angry and frightened and sick of the plague—and Agamemnon sweeps in. All the men shout, “Respect the priest! Take the ransom! Give her back!” Someone yells “Quiet, quiet, quiet! The King of Men, Agamemnon is speaking!”

  Silence.

  Agamemnon grabs the scepter and rises:

  AGAMEMNON OK—(Magnanimously.) —

  I’m willing to give her back, if that’s what you all want. I’m not a tyrant. I can see that it’s best for everyone if I do.

  But fetch me another prize—and straight off too—

  else I alone of the Argives go without my honor.

  That would be a disgrace.

  POET And the men all kind of murmur ’cause there are no prizes left, they’ve all been distributed—someone will have to give up their prize—and suddenly a huge figure rises in the back—AH! (Excited whisper.) This is our man—

  Achilles.

  In the middle of all this—misery—there is this one genius.

  Achilles … is the GREATEST WARRIOR that ever lived—bigger than Heracles, bigger than Sinbad, bigger than … (Asking the audience.) well, who’s the greatest warrior living now …? (He waits for an answer and then quickly moves on.) And he’s not just good at killing. It’s that he’s good at the art of war. Now—you have to understand that Achilles is superhuman. He’s, uh, half mortal, but also half god. His mother, Thetis, is a sea-nymph, he was raised by a centaur and, you know, amazing things, like his, his, he could talk to, he could understand animals. Animals talked to him. His horse—I can’t remember the horse’s name—talked to him. I remember wuh, once, once his horse sat him down. His horse said—no, no, one day, Achilles was, he was, he was uh, he was really … he was overeating, and his horse said, (Neighing.) “Whoa-oa-oa-oa!” (Laughs.) … We all laughed.

  Oh yes … and Achilles knows he’s going to die—here, in Troy. He doesn’t know when, he doesn’t know how, but he knows he won’t be going home. That’s been prophesied. Achilles will have a brief but glorious life. Imagine living with that.

  This is Achilles. Here he is.

  (THE POET rises, transforms to embody Achilles.)

  ACHILLES

  Just how, Agamemnon,

  Great field marshal … most grasping man alive,

  How can the generous Argives give you prizes now?

  I know of no troves of treasure, piled, lying idle,

  anywhere. Whatever we dragged from towns we plundered,

  a
ll’s been portioned out. But collect it, call it back

  from the rank and file? That would be the disgrace—

  POET And oh—he shouldn’t have said that, the men start to shrink back now, leaving Achilles alone to face the commander-in-chief.

  AGAMEMNON You can’t talk to me like that, even if you are the bravest fighter we have. You’re so gifted. You’re such a great warrior. But don’t forget you’re half god. I’m only a man, but I’ll show you who’s greater.

  What do you want? To cling to your own prize

  while I sit calmly by—empty-handed here?

  I’ll take what I want—Give me Briseis!

  POET Now Briseis is someone that Achilles won, fair and square. Not only has he won her, he’s come to love her. Briseis is his companion—she cooks for him, she sleeps with him, she’s, she’s become dear to him.

  ACHILLES

  Don’t give me commands!

  The Trojans never did me damage, not in the least.