Homer Prepares – Naked In Armour
- Redfinch Productions
- David Li Sound Gallery
The Ian Potter Centre for Performing Arts
Monash University Clayton Campus
$40
Past Event
Naked In Armour reveals Homer preparing and performing books 17, 18 & 19 of The Iliad.
The armies fight for a whole day over Patroclos’ naked body.
Hector steals Achilles’ weapons.
Achilles embraces death.
The divine craftsman forges a shield for him.
He rejoins the army to prepare for his final assault.
Homer Prepares is an ongoing theatrical performance project.
James McCaughey, with accompanist Matthew Horsley, is taking a journey through The Iliad.
A series of performances examine the tension between composition and improvisation that makes ’The Iliad’ that has come down to us.
Each is a free-standing performance, not requiring that the audience has attended previous performances.
In each we see Homer thinking ahead about each day’s singing, highlighting the narrative choices available to him, shaping his work to grasp his audience’s attention and challenge their expectations.
The performances are set at an imagined festival on an imagined island to which people have come “from all the islands, the coastal cities, and beyond”.
James McCaughey and percussionist Matthew Horsley create an accessible, contemporary vision that captures all of Homer’s violence, humour and lyricism.
The current iteration of Homer Prepares, Naked In Armour covers books 17 to 19 of The Iliad.