LITTLE ILIAD.

Text and performance by Evan Webber. Direction and additional performance by Frank Cox-O'Connell. Design and videography by Pierre-Antoine Lafon Simard. Artistic production by Megan Flynn.

“This young and hugely talented company from Toronto bring a gem of a show... Small, intimate and perfectly formed, it is current, deeply moving and thought provoking”. Róise Goan, Director, ABSOLUT Fringe

Thom is a soldier on his way to Afghanistan. He calls to say goodbye to his old friend, Evan. Evan’s a writer. He’s working on a story that re-imagines the Little Iliad; the lost Homeric poem that tells of how the wounded archer, Philoctetes, abandoned by Odysseus, was coaxed back to fight for the Greeks at Troy and finally win the war. Evan wants them to work on this project together, but first they need to agree on what the story is.

One performer is live. The other one isn’t. A small audience listens on headphones to their Skype conversation: an intimate performance about the differences between making art and making war.   

Thom and Evan’s story is a truth about fiction: the writer is trying to convince his friend, a soldier, to perform in a new version of an ancient war story. The text is built from the writers attempt at reconciling opposed politics, displaced geographies, and the uncomfortably fine difference between the performance of art and the performance of war. Their language is casual and intimate. They say hello. They talk about their work. They talk about the story and about the contemporary (and classical Greek) application of storytelling as “public therapy”. They talk about how their conversation can or cannot be used as part of a show, what would make it possible for one to make a performance out of it. The demands of the characters make their situation into a different version of the Philoctetes story, which casts each character as both Odysseus and Philoctetes. In the play they are in, each is the abandoner, each has been abandoned; is there some way out of the situation of this story? How do we stop performing?

The performance: Two actors play. One plays live, while the other is a recording, digitally projected in diminutive scale onto a series of plastecine bodies built and animated by the living actor. Thom’s video-image is projected a plastecine body that must be kept in subtle motion to keep the image alive. The demands of this task on the live performer create a detailed, playful choreography, while live action in synch with the videotaped performance captures the tension in the unreal reality of digital communication. The performance feels familiar, even as its strangeness creates a critical distance between the work and the audience.

The audience too, is little. Between ten and twenty people gather in a room and watch a mediated performance, listening on headphones to highly detailed sound, and watching a precise mixture of the theatrically rough and the cinematically precise. The performance is just over half-an hour. One audience leaves as another enters. There is a moment of exchange. The performance begins again.

   photo by Annika Johansson

PRESENTATION HISTORY.  

Little Iliad was developed with the assistance of the Ontario Arts Council and Harbourfront Centre. It was first presented in March 2010 as part of Free Fall in Toronto. It was subsequently developed at FOE, l'Espace René-Provost, Gatineau (Vieux-Hull), Québec before being presented by Absolut Fringe at the Smock Alley Theatre in Dublin, Ireland in September, 2010.

ABOUT THE COMPANY.

One Reed Theatre: One Reed Theatre was founded in 2005 by Frank Cox-O’Connell, Megan Flynn, Daniel Mroz, Marc Tellez, and Evan Webber to create and produce experimental, collaborative performance work. One Reed’s work strives for precision and thoughtfulness in the creation of new, and the use of old forms. One Reed Theatre is committed to an exploration of what performance means, to stripping things down and giving things up: “If, despite these ragged edges, we performers can struggle to understand without embarrassment or dishonesty, then the audience might be willing to do so as well.” (Canadian Theatre Review 135) 

One Reed’s work has been shown in Ottawa, Montreal, New York and Toronto. Previous performance works include: Nor The Cavaliers Who Come With Us (Pauline McGibbon Theatre, NTS, Montreal; NaCL, New York; Spotlight Award winner, Summer Works, Toronto, 2006), It’s hard to count to a million (Labcab 2007, Rhubarb 2008), A Prayer For Every Hour (Theatre Centre 2008) (never underestimate) The Power (Summer Works 2008), and 2 Modern Feelings (Luminato / New Waves Festival 2009). One Reed Theatre was a resident company at the Theatre Centre for 2007-08, and has taught workshops in devising and performance at the University of Toronto, the University of Ottawa, and at the Magnetic North Theatre Festival.

One Reed Theatre’s experimental ethos means working with and learning from other artists: frequent collaborators with the company include choreographer Ame Henderson and dramaturge Jacob Zimmer, designers Sherri Hay and Trevor Schwellnus, director Paul Thompson, and filmmaker Sandy Carson. Little Iliad will the first project One Reed undertakes with multi-disciplinary theatre artist Pierre-Antoine Lafon Simard. 

TOURING INQUIRIES. 

Little Iliad tours in 2011/2012. For inquiries contact artistic producer Megan Flynn at megan(at)relativesafety.com