HTY
Playwright Yokanaan Kearns, center, hams it up with the cast of Honolulu Theatre for Youth's "Dis/Troy."
4 actors tackle
multiple roles in modern
play on Trojan War
Homer was a Greek bard who died sometime around 750 years before the birth of Christ. Local playwright Yokanaan Kearns says that if the ancient Greek were around today, he'd have no problem writing blockbuster action film scripts in Hollywood.
"Homer knew what Hollywood knows -- you start off with conflict right at the very beginning. You don't start at the beginning of the story, you start right in the middle, and you have sex and violence," Kearns said as he spoke about the creator of "The Iliad," the epic account of the Trojan War that provides the foundation of Kearns' new play for Honolulu Theatre For Youth, "Dis/Troy."
Kearns' judiciously abridged version of Homer's work took several years to complete. It opens to the public tomorrow at the Tenney Theatre on the grounds of St. Andrew's Cathedral.
Honolulu Theatre for Youth presents "Dis/Troy"
Where: Tenney Theatre, St. Andrew's Cathedral, Queen Emma SquareWhen: 4:30 and 7:30 p.m. tomorrow, continues with 4:30 and 7:30 Saturday performances through Mar. 20
Tickets: $12 general, $6 for those under 19 and over 60
Call: 839-9885
Kearns' challenge was to conform an epic to a cast of four actors working with portable sets. He had to do a lot of cutting and trimming to come up with a version that fit those specifications and still tell a compelling story.
He says Homer showed him the way.
"Homer makes it very clear in the first line that this is about the rage of Achilles, and then I went 'Well, duh!' If you condense all the battles and all the fight scenes, if you combine several characters into one character, the basic through-line of the story is that Achilles gets really pissed off because he's not getting what he deserves as the greatest warrior. His anger causes his own soldiers to die, (but) eventually he figures out how to stop being angry in a most surprising way."
KEARNS HAS an advantage over most people who approach "The Iliad" -- he's a avid student of ancient languages and can read ancient Greek.
"Homer was dealing with an oral tradition that was about 400 years old, but he was the guy -- we think -- who put it all together, this oral sung tradition of the adventures at Troy and other places. He was the virtuoso, the Mozart of epic poetry ... and as I was writing the play, there were a couple of times I wondered 'What does he really mean here?' I looked at a bunch of translations and then I went to the Greek and that solved the problem."
The Trojan War has been dragging on for nine years as "Dis/Troy" opens. Company actors Reb Beau Allen, Louie Hung, Janice Terukina and Hermenigildo "Junior" Tesoro divide 10 roles between them. Hung and Tesoro portray goddesses as well as warriors, but Kearns says there's more to it than simply going for cheap laughs by putting men in dresses.
"(The audience) might not be able to see how silly these goddesses are if they were played by women. I've seen (school performances) and, at first, the younger kids laugh because these guys are playing goddesses, but that dies away really quickly. ... (Director) Mark (Lutwak) did a great job getting as much drama and comedy out of the play as possible.
"There is no good guy and bad guy in 'The Iliad' ... It doesn't make the Trojans out as the evil "other." ... Achilles is the hero fighting against Hector, the prince of Troy, but Hector is never made to seem like the evil enemy. He's just the guy on the other side doing his job just like Achilles is.
"What I'm most impressed about with Homer is not that he's anti-war, because he's not. His view seems to be that war is hell ... but if you have to fight it and it's inevitable ... then you might as well derive honor and glory from it because there's a good chance that you're going to die."
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