Deeper Look

Tales as Old As Time: Ancient Greek Drama In A Time Of War By Christy Denny

Achilles in battle in an illustration depicting a scene from The Iliad

Quick—name three people who lived in the 12th century B.C.

Impossible, right? Who can recall details like these without a history textbook?

But you might recognize the name Achilles. How about Paris, Hector, or Ajax? Thanks to Homer's epic poem The Iliad, chances are you can actually recall quite a few facts about the Trojan War, despite the fact that mythology says it began some time around 1194 BC. Thanks to the special place it occupies in the literary canon, the story of this war is ingrained in our collective conscious. It is a story that has been told time and time again, in a huge variety of incarnations. From the original epic poem, it has been committed to prose, made into a cinematic blockbuster, and taken to the stage.

But the timeless sense of The The Iliad is shared by other ancient Greek texts, as well. While this season at Seattle Rep closes with a startling new vision of Homer's Iliad, other less-well-known plays from Ancient Greece are experiencing a theatrical renaissance right now. What is it about these works that keeps them feeling fresh and relevant, generation after generation?

Following the 2003 invasion of Iraq, many artists and audiences looked for ways to respond to war. Though many sources generated war-related stories, one could not help but notice the volume of Greek-inspired work. Part of the reason that these works feel so contemporary is that, while the wars and the ways they are fought have changed, the effects that wars have on soldiers and civilians remain much the same, no matter the era. Surely, a Greek soldier in the ten-year siege of Troy and his wife at home could relate to a soldier and spouse from Fort Lewis dealing with their separation during long tours of duty. There is something comforting in knowing that long-ago cultures confronted the same issues we face today.

It's that sense of togetherness that led writer-director Bryan Doerries to create Theater of War, a theatre company that travels to military bases performing readings of ancient Greek texts that confront what we now know as Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Doerries told The New York Times that "by performing these scenes, we're hoping that our modern-day soldiers will see their difficulties in a historical context, and perhaps feel less alone."

In the ensuing years, theatres across the country have also produced Ellen McLaughlin's adaptation of Aeschylus' The Persians, which takes place during the Greco-Persian War. March 3, 2003 saw the Peloponnesian War take center stage, as over 1000 readings of Aristophanes' Lysistrata played to audiences throughout the United States and in sixty other countries.

Why use a Greek story instead of creating an original one? For McLaughlin, the unique perspective of the Greek playwright could not be ignored. The writers were soldiers themselves, writing for audiences of other soldiers. McLaughlin writes in the introduction to her compilation The Greek Plays that "we haven't had that kind of dynamic between playwrights and their audience in theatrical literature since. Never again would citizens address other citizens about war in this way. The plays weren't written to please wealthy patrons or producers. ... One could not only speak the truth as one understood it, but one could be certain of being heard."

And more than 2400 years later, we’re still listening.