Four years ago, Circuit Arts began an experiment called Locals: an off-season weekend for local performing artists to try out new projects in front of a friendly audience. Most of the participants were creating material from scratch. But Lagan Love, directed by Katherine Reid, did an excerpt from a pre-existing play: “An Iliad,” by Lisa Peterson and Denis O’Hare. The 20-minute performance made such a powerful impression that two years later, Circuit Arts gave Love and Reid the stage upstairs at the Grange to do the whole play. It received standing ovations.
This weekend, “An Iliad” will play a third time, now on the Patricia Neal Stage at the Martha’s Vineyard Playhouse. “I love that this was a piece brought to us by a member of our local theater community and that we’ve been able to shepherd it from just an idea, through the process of trying it out, to it coming to full fruition as a mainstage production,” says Brooke Hardman Ditchfield, artistic director of the Playhouse. “That’s what I hoped Locals would facilitate when we began it.”
The character in “An Iliad” is a quasi-immortal poet, tasked with telling the wrenching, all-consuming story of the Trojan War. Tasked, more specifically, with repeatedly telling the story of the Trojan War for as long as humankind conducts warfare. As the beleaguered poet makes plain, all wars, in a sense, are the Trojan War.
Love is a longtime admirer of the play: “Fifteen years ago, I had the privilege of seeing the debut performed by [co-writer] Denis O’Hare, and also Stephen Spinella — they did it in tandem. It really stuck with me. It was the most singular thing I had seen, and it became a question of: Can I do that? Am I capable of climbing that mountain? And it stayed in the background until Locals came up. Then the idea occurred: Well, what if I did a section of it? If I can do a part, maybe I can do the whole. I wanted company along the way. Katherine and I had worked together a few times, and she’s one of my favorite collaborators. We volley back and forth well. And she has a great love of Greek mythology. She had some doubts about, funnily enough, being a woman offering a perspective that is so about the boys who go to work. But Lisa Peterson, the co-writer, is also a woman.”
Love stresses that this one-person show is not a solo journey. “Katherine really did push me to the height that that play requires. So the reaction at Locals was, ‘Well, when are you going to do the rest?’ It took a minute before [local theater-maker, dancer, and comedian] Abby Bender went to bat for us to make it happen [at the Grange last year]. It took me the time between Locals and the show to memorize the script. That was two years.”
The script is compelling, and Love is compulsively watchable. Additionally, the storytelling is enhanced by a haunting soundscape. “The music is a huge element in the play,” says Love. “It is the personification of this muse that he calls upon for inspiration, in that ancient Greek tradition of ‘singing the tale.’”
There is an intricate interplay between sounds and words. The play’s professional debut, with O’Hare and Spinella, had a live bass player in the rafters, which may have made it easier to get the timing right than relying on technology. But, Love says, “for our purposes, we’re using a recorded soundtrack. My muse is Leandra Seward [in the stage manager’s booth], who presses the button when I need her to.” Otherwise, the play is largely free of theatrical flourishes. “It’s about the text and the challenge of not having a lot to work with, and still telling the story anyway,” says Love.
Love’s father is a Vietnam war veteran, which was a contributing factor in her interest in doing the play. “It was sort of a way to understand him more — that was always in the background, and he was tightlipped about it. But I was touched, because I asked if I could interview him as part of the process, and he agreed, and I got to learn exactly what it was that he went through,” she says. “He lost a very dear friend; it’s a bit of an understatement to say he went through a lot. I think the play does a lot to humanize what people at war feel and go through, and really, to tell the story of people who don’t come home, or do come home very changed. And it’s a play that, unfortunately, continues to be very relevant.”
It is so painfully relevant, in fact, that one of the most cited parts of the script requires a footnote. The poet begins to recite a list of wars, beginning in ancient Sumera and going through the present day. Because “the present day” is not static, the footnote empowers the actor to add new wars as they arise.
Love’s list is already longer than it was a year ago.
“An Iliad” takes the audience down into deep places of grief, loss, and longing. But it also lifts them up. To Love, the most important takeaway is, “Catharsis. It is a chance to gather as a community and grieve and laugh, and perhaps even hopefully become inspired to action.”
“An Iliad” plays at the M.V. Playhouse June 11 to 14, Thursday through Saturday at 7, Sunday matinee at 2 pm. Running time is 90 minutes. Pay what you can, with a suggested donation of $30. 24 Church St., Vineyard Haven, circuitarts.org/iliad.