SFist Interview With Lillian Groag, Director of ACT's War Music
ACT's latest production, War Music, which has its world premiere tonight (buy tickets here) is a modern retelling of The Illiad adapted from Christopher Logue's new translation of the epic poem. We spoke with director Lillian Groag, who previously directed ACT's The Rivals, and also adapted the poem for the stage.
SFist: What attracted you most to Christopher Logue's new translation of The Illiad?
Lillian Groag: The knock-down, spectacular language. Immediately accessible, from farce to heart-stopping lyricism within one paragraph, to stark tragedy in the next, to 21st century ironic angst. Crisp, poetic, contemporary and ancient all at the same time.
Why do you think the story of the Trojan War, or Homer's telling of it, has remained so fascinating for three thousand years?
It’s one of the primary myths: the young warrior who gets into trouble of his own making and who dies young, but in his case, due to a “deal” struck with “the gods” to somehow dodge the oblivion that death brings to all; the most beautiful woman in the world runs away with another beautiful prince but … she’s married to someone else who tries with all his heart and mind to bring about peace and save his city and his family … and fails; the wives who grieve; the beautiful girls that are traded back and forth and abducted and captured and have no voice at all and no function other than provide the excuse to an inexcusable war … it’s all now so familiar. There are hundreds of translations in all languages, several movies, ballets, paintings, operas …it never ends.
I have often thought that we are particularly attached to this - but perhaps it’s just me - is a question of the first step towards what we cheerfully call “civilization.” In this society of warriors, where might is right and efficiency in killing, razing and raping is the order of the day, we suddenly have a man who knows he will die young (after all, it’s his choice: die soon and be remembered forever rather than live in long but obscure domesticity) but insists that there is a way to do things and it somehow has to do with “honor.” He is no less a brutal killer for that, but he does place supreme importance in a weird kind of mutual respect and this “honor thing.” Very interesting.
How do you portray the gods in this production-- do they appear differently from the mortal characters?
The gods don’t come off too well in Homer, and they really come off terribly bad in Christopher Logue. They are the irrational forces that guide our existence, which reside in ourselves and which are as erratic and murderously farcical as we can be. And have been, whether in the highest echelons of government or in or everyday life. Gary Wills calls Logue’s depiction of their influence on humanity a case of “slapstick cruelty”.
What is the best staged adaptation of a classical play or myth that you've seen in, say, the last ten or fifteen years?
Carey Perloff’s ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore (ACT)
Laird Williams’ Pericles at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival
Tony Taccone and Stephen Wadsworth’s Oresteia at Berkeley Rep
Joe Hanreddy’s Anna Karenina at Milwaukee Rep