THE TROJAN WAR
Play by: Neil Truglio
© Modest Arts
Director: Neil Truglio
Set Design: Neil Truglio
Light Design: Natalie Murray
Costume Design: Chantelle Frazier
Photo Credits: Sean Dolan
The Trojan War is a new play staged by Modest Arts in conjunction with the Community College of Denver and saw its premiere in the Production Studio of the King Center in April of 2017.
"My original desire in creating a Trojan War play was to encompass the story told in the Iliad of the last ten days of the war, while also expanding to include the larger story of how the war came to be and the fallout after. Much of the content was inspired by the works of Homer, Sophocles, Aeschylus, Shakespeare and more. I wanted to create an avenue for any audience to digest the production whether their familiarity with the story came from The Odyssey, or plays like Agamemnon, Troilus and Cressida, or even from films like Troy. The final piece was built on research undertaken by the ensemble and a desire to be as accurate to the known history, while leaving room for dramatic license in the storytelling".
The script is presented as a single play in three acts, built around the tradition of Greek drama and the Festival of Dionysus, where cycle plays were often presented over the course of three days.
The design concepts for the show included a large mountain which represented all playing spaces for both the Achaeans and Trojans, five doors for the five gods represented in the play, a pool of water, which was used in both action sequences and moments of peace as a reflecting pool, and aerial silk which the actors utilized in moments of self expression to symbolize their struggles or desires. The production also utilized modern dance as a representation of the character's emotional state, sometimes dancing together as one army, but often separated by their own unique challenges and struggles.