New York Theatre Workshop (NYTW) Artistic Director James C. Nicola and Managing Director William Russo have announced that the New York premiere of An Iliad, by Denis O’Hare and Lisa Peterson, based on Homer’s Iliad translated by Robert Fagles, directed by Ms. Peterson, will begin performances on Wednesday, February 15, 2012, at NYTW, 79 East 4 Street, between Bowery and Second Avenue. Mr. O’Hare and Stephen Spinella will alternate performances of the play. Opening nights are Tuesday, March 6, 2012 (Mr. O’Hare) and Wednesday, March 7, 2012 (Mr. Spinella).
A sprawling yarn based on Homer's epic poem, An Iliad spins the familiar tale of gods and goddesses, undying love and endless battles told through an original and immediate voice. Tony Award-winning actors Denis O'Hare (Assassins, Take Me Out) and Stephen Spinella (Angels in America) will alternate as performers in this account of humanity's unshakeable attraction to violence, destruction, and chaos. Has anything really changed since the Trojan War?
Denis O’Hare currently plays Larry Harvey on the new hit television show, “American Horror Story”and most recently appeared as Vampire King Russell Edgington on HBO’s “True Blood.” O’Hare has received numerous honors for his work including a Tony Award, an OBIE and a Drama Desk Award for Take Me Out, a Drama Desk Award for Sweet Charity, and a Tony nomination for the musical Assassins. Last seen at New York Theatre Workshop in Vienna: Lusthaus, O’Hare returns and makes his theatre writing debut as the co-creator and alternating performer of An Iliad.
Award-winning actor, Stephen Spinella won consecutive Tony Awards for Best Featured
Actor and Best Actor for his performance as Prior Walter in Angels in America: Millennium
Approaches and Angels in America: Perestroika, respectively. Spinella also performed on
Broadway in Spring Awakening, Electra, A View from the Bridge and James Joyce’s The Dead, for which he earned a Drama Desk Award and Tony nomination. Last season Spinella received rave reviews for his performance in The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide to Capitalism and Socialism With a Key to the Scriptures by Tony Kushner at The Public Theater.
At NYTW Lisa Peterson has directed numerous productions, including Light Shining in Buckinghamshire for which she won an OBIE award, and The Waves, which she adapted from Virginia Woolf’s novel of the same title with David Bucknam and which received two Drama Desk Award nominations. Ms. Peterson has directed productions at The Public Theater, Primary Stages, Vineyard Theater, MTC, and MCC. She is a graduate of Yale College.
“In the beginning Denis and I were making An Iliad to be performed by him—but as things turned out, Denis wasn’t able to play earlier productions of the work,” said director Lisa Peterson. “At the McCarter Theatre we were blessed with the amazing Stephen Spinella who was so stunning that Denis and I decided it would be right to share the New York premiere with him.”
Peterson continued, “Since then, we’ve become interested in rhapsodes that existed in ancient Greece. These were actors who learned portions of the Iliad and the Odyssey and recited them in turns as part of festivals. This tickled us, because it seemed to describe our own experience of rehearsing side by side and celebrating what’s the same—and what isn’t—in two remarkable actors telling a profound and ancient story night after night.”
