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Nicole E. Zimmermann
Acting III
Trent Blanton
16 December, 2016
An Iliad at Lantern Theatre Company
I have to say I was very skeptical when I purchased tickets to An Iliad at Lantern Theatre

Company. It was only fifteen dollars for the back row at this one man version of Homers epic

and it was only an hour and a half so Bria and I said assured ourselves that even if it was horrible

that is not much time out of our lives. We were even more worried when we located the theatre

behind a church and entered the black box with fifty theatre Lantern Theatre Company

subscribers, all over fifty. Boy, were we wrong. Honestly, from the moment Peter DeLaurier,

who played The Poet, entered the stage, I knew I was not going to want this play to end. It was

really fascinating because Bria and I were just discussing before the show over dinner how so

many poor Americans die for our country because rich men are trying to sort out their problems.

This discussion became so poignant as DeLaurier launched me into the world of ancient Greece

and forced me to realize that our world has unfortunately not changed much at all since.

What is awesome about this play is that an epic poem like The Iliad was originally told

to town. Thus, An Iliad brings the story back to its

aloud by scops who travelled from town

purest form and how it would have been told in ancient Greece. What I love about the way this

play tells the same story we have all heard, is that it gets to the root of human struggle at the

heart of the Trojan war. Greece was not a unified country at this time: It was a collection of city

states, each with their own rulers. Thus, when Helen of Troy left Menelaus for Paris, causing

drama between wealthy families of the Mediterranean, the lower class men were expected to join

together and fight. I had always thought that the Trojan wars were filled with immense honor and
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cultural pride but I am now understanding that these men were truly fighting for things that had

nothing to do with them. It really made me stop and think about my personal definition of honor:

Was it honorable for these men to leave their families and die for their country when the cause

of the fighting was so incredibly shallow? Was it honorable for Hector, Menelaus, and Paris to

ask these men to fight a war that only concerned them? I really do not know how I feel about war

in general after watching this play unfold.

I think I was able to open my mind and go on this journey because DeLaurier is truly a

master storyteller. I could even go as far to call his archetype the Wizard because he was so

easily able to transport me throughout history and gracefully shift from character to character. It

requires so much ease, specificity, and focus to achieve a level of sustainment to tell an epic

story like The Iliad through ninety minutes on a bare stage. And he really played all of the

characters, including the women and children. This could have been really unnatural but he did

not play a woman as a man, he took on the mannerisms of a woman and transformed so

seamlessly into one that it did not bother me at all. I think that was the true mastery of his

performance: The ability to make true, fleshed-out humans out of these characters as opposed to

playing the two-dimensional stereotypes we all know from history class.

The music was another amazing element of this show. Liz Filios played The Muse and

also composed the music for the show. She played a multitude of instruments and used the space

in interesting ways to make sounds, such as plucking the strings inside of the piano and using

drumsticks on the metal stairs. The way she created the sound of thunder or increased tension

behind a scene with dissonant violin music seemed truly in the moment as if she was deciding

right then what sounds would best accompany that part of the story. Of course she had a set
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score, but she moved with such ease and listened so intently to the poet that she seemed like a

participant in telling the story for the first time, rather than going through the motions behind the

scenes. I think it would be really challenging to be in a basically one-man show and not only be

in it, but also not speak. It is challenging to sustain for an hour and a half without speaking. The

only way she had to communicate was responding to the poet with her body language and with

sounds. And she really told a story with just these two forms of communication.

There was truly an interesting dialogue going on between them even though he never

even verbally addressed her the entire hour and a half. This really made me think about the

importance of listening and responding as an actor: It is really all you need at the end of the day.

It is so interesting just to watch two humans behaving and interacting, you do not really need

anything beyond that. But it is so hard as a young actor to achieve this process because other,

less important things like lines and acting get in the way.

And he was really listening too. Even though he was the only one speaking, he was truly

listening to the words he was saying and allowing them to land on him as if he had never heard

them before. This was really apparent in the section where he named all of the wars that have

occurred in history since the Trojan Wars. This really could become a historical laundry list that

leads nowhere and has no effect on the audience whatsoever. But he really took in the gravity of

what he was saying and knew what each war meant, even if he was not an expert in the history of

each one. This really led to a build of drama that was felt by him and the audience: We were all

crying. And this is not because he was screaming or throwing his arms in the air in outrage, but

rather he was sitting there stating each war, listening to the words coming out of his mouth, and

allowing them to affect him in homage to what occurred in each of these moments of history. I
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think this requires a level of trust in yourself as an actor that you do not need to do anything to be

interesting: It is actually more interesting the less you do. Thus, his performance became about

bringing justice to the ghosts in the room of all those men who lost their lives in wars over the

course of history. And because of that, he had a very clear objective to fulfill in what seems like

an impossible feat as an actor.

I have always been interested in history and mythology, but this passion has always been

very removed and fictional for me. What is so wonderful about An Iliad is that it brings humanity

to what seems like a fairy-tale: These were real people who suffered and their story deserved to

be told in a way that is personal and not so clinical. This play made me realize how similar these

characters are to people today and makes me less afraid to approach a classical text in the future.

It seemed daunting to me in the past to be in a play like Agamemnon because I had no idea how I

would relate to people who lived thousands of years ago. But I now realize after watching An

Iliad that humans are still the same to the core and the same archetypes and psychological

gestures apply. I am really happy I ventured out of my comfort zone to Philadelphia to see this

show: I am looking forward to broadening my theatre-going horizons beyond Broadway because

there is so much excellent live theatre all over, you just have to be willing to look and try out

new things.