Ithaka

Drama based on the Odyssey's homecoming songs

This is a translation of a reading into a play. Just like somebody raising his head from the book of Homer and seeing on the stage in front of him the long final scene on Ithaca, just as he imagines it. Digressions, spin offs, associations, following along the reading, become parts of the dramaturgy. The dialogue loses, for more flexibility, it's rhyme and the rhapsodic tone, But even so the great translations of Johann Heinrich Voss and Anton Weiher are still echoed: maybe enough to transport the listener back to the world's infancy as they always do. (Botho Strauss)