Allan Appel Photo
Emily Wilson, in mask, as Calypso with Julia Raucci in Odysseus’s white coat.
Not all journeys home have to involve ten years of hardship and imprisonment, fighting a cyclops, or fending off angry gods.
Extricating yourself from a toxic relationship, emerging from a nasty bullying episode, or just moving out of the nest into college can be journeys as daunting as traveling from the siege of Troy home to Ithaca.
So suggests The Odyssey: Devised, the heartfelt, moving, and musical take on Odysseus’s journey in Homer’s epic poem The Odyssey.
It will be staged Aug. 7 and 8 at 7:00 p.m. at the Long Wharf Theatre‘s Stage II.
“I am the prow of the ship, I am the stern, I am the sail,” says the ensemble.
The production, which includes music, masks, and script entirely devised by a half-dozen teenagers and young adults in the theatre’s month-long dramatic summer program, is being directed by Mallory Pellegrino, the theatre’s education programs manager.
Working through improvisation, more intensively with a smaller group, and on a text by Homer rather than Shakespeare, are all departures for Long Wharf’s annual young people’s ensemble, Pellegrino said. (Click here for a story about one of the “Shake It Up Shakespeare” performances from young people’s ensembles of summers past.)
In this play version of Odysseus’s journey from the fall of Troy to his wife Penelope and son Telemachus, the half-dozen young Greater New Haven actors, ranging in age from 14 to 22, play about 20 parts, including the Sirens, Calypso, a half dozen gods, and the suitors out to steal Odysseus’s wife and kingdom back in Ithaca.
All pass around a white coat — their symbol for Odysseus — to play the role of the hero at different points in the hour-long show. After all, aren’t we all the heroes of our own lives?
The play begins with each actor stepping out, breaking the fourth wall, and telling the audience members what their personal journeys are. That frame for the play emerged from the first assignment Pellegrino gave her young actors: to read Homer and tell her what they found most exciting and most moving.
Over the next three weeks, sessions were held on mask-making, movement, and styles of acting, including commedia dell’arte.
For 19-year-old Josie Kulp of North Haven, the most moving aspect of the work and the show that’s about to open is not Odysseus’ killing the cattle of the gods, or his imprisonment by Calypso on her island, or what those adventures, metaphorically, might represent in her life.
“The greatest thing is our making it. It’s our play,” she said.
Tavis Daluz-Cates, who plays Poseidon, Polyphemus the Cyclops, and other characters who make Odysseus’ journey a tad difficult and dangerous, said he could connect with a man just trying to get home. About to become a senior in college, Daluz-Cates said he took heart from Odysseus that moving on to the next point and then to the next in your life just plain involves difficulties.
Then he put on his Cylops cap — the props are minimal because the roles change so fast — and proceeded to threaten Odysseus and his crew.
For Edward Cegan (pictured), who transforms into Hermes, or Mercury the Messenger, just by putting nifty wings on his sneakers, the play taught him that you don’t have to go on long journeys to experience things anew, or deeply. “You can go on non-literal ones,” too he said.
If Tuesday’s rehearsal is an indication, in his speech at the play’s start, he’s going to step out and say, “Life is hard. I’m learning to be more independent.”
Then he’s going to turn around and put on those wings.
Brett Pellegrino’s Zeus, with flashlight.
The Odyssey: Devised runs Aug. 7 and Aug. 8 at 7 p.m. at Long Wharf’s Stage II. Tickets are $10. More information is available at Long Wharf’s site, or by calling 203 – 787-4282. Other members of the cast not mentioned above include Brett Pellegrino, who plays Telemachus and Zeus; Julia Raucci, as Circe and Penelope; Emily Wilson as Calypso. Francesca Messina is the student stage manager.
