On May 2, actor Patty Gallagher (California Shakespeare, Rogue Theater Tucson, University of California Santa Cruz Performance, Play, and Design) and pianist/composer Ben Leeds Carson (Sideband Records, University of California Santa Cruz Creative Technologies) take the stage at Brian Friel Theatre in Lisa Peterson and Denis O'Hare’s AN ILIAD - a monologue re-telling of the Trojan War, which is also a telling of the catastrophe of war, and a telling of our telling of war ... ceaseless, comedic, compulsive, and mournful.

Gallagher's and Carson's stage presence is guided by practices rooted in Beckett, Shakespeare, clowning, and by the study of Hellenic musics, and their Egyptian and Mesopotamian origins - traditions which this play’s terrifying questions: What words to say, what strings are there to pluck, and what sighs and screams are suitable to sing, for the description of war?

Kirsten Brandt’s deep, insightful direction compels Gallagher and Carson to join as a manifestation of Homeric inspiration; Gallagher the celebrated poet grounding her audience in the wars that give shape to their place in the world. The Brian Friel Theatre production team, with lighting designed by Mary Tumelty, taking inspiration from the pioneering lighting designer David Lee Cuthbert (1965-2025), alongside Costa Rican costume and stage designer Pamela Rodríguez Montero, have developed a world that channels Gallagher's words into, and out of, the wordless forces of the muse: the piano reimagined as a lyre, and a sense of harmonia that connected the story to the ethereal.