WESTWOOD, California -- What happens when one of the world's oldest stories is wedded to cutting-edge technologies on a stage set?
Theater-goers here will discover the answer next summer when UCLA's School of Theater, Film and Television launches a retelling of Homer's The Iliad that incorporates online community, video feeds, digitally projected images, an interactive floor show, and, oh yes, actors.
The idea is to make one of The Iliad's primary themes -- hero Achilles' constantly shifting allegiances to the Greeks and the Trojans -- a metaphor for how 21st century people find their lives shaped by technology and media.
"Our allegiances can change hundreds of times in a day, at the click of a mouse or a remote control," said Jared Stein, the project's playwright and a graduate from the UCLA school. "That weakness of human character, the desire to associate with one group or another, is central to Homer's story."
The play's goal is to deconstruct those modern-day allegiances and help theater-goers discover how they form preferences, whether for toothpaste or Osama bin Laden.
With the world picking sides in the Afghanistan and Palestinian conflicts, the performance at the Los Angeles Theater Center is timely. But UCLA's Iliad will be humorous and light -- more concerned with understanding human nature than blasting it.
UCLA's Hypermedia Lab, the experimental theater department spearheading the project, has played with technology before. Last year, its production of Ionesco's Shakespearean satire Macbett had flourishes such as sensor-packed wands that set off special effects when the witches boiled and bubbled.
For The Iliad, project participants wondered "what would happen if you made technology part of the intrinsic storytelling rather than part of the design?" said Jeff Burke, a UCLA adjunct professor, an electrical engineer and the technology integrator for the performance.
Movies -- which integrate computer-generated characters, environments and special effects into their plots -- are far more advanced than theater in making technology part of the action, Burke noted.
The Iliad performance will actually begin sometime this spring, when UCLA launches online communities of "Greeks" (Los Angelenos) and "Trojans" (outsiders). People will electronically submit information about themselves and receive e-mail "news flashes" from the war front.
The actual performance will incorporate that information into visuals, sound effects, exhibits outside the theater, and other ways that Stein and Burke don't want to disclose for fear of giving away the play's plot.
The interactive exhibits -- held before the performance, during intermission and after the completion -- maintain the same playful sense as the play: Stein offers "Whack-a-Helen" with electronic air guns as an example of what theater-goers may encounter.
The project represents a sharp departure for Stein, whose career (interrupted by film school) has included stints as a child actor, an assistant movie director in Hollywood and a writer for a New York theater troupe.
In this environment, the playwright's job becomes more about creating a formula for the action rather than an actual script; and the eight actors may end up doing a lot of ad libbing based on input from the audience, Stein said.
"Everything we know about traditional theater is out the window," Stein said. "Hopefully, it will be a bit more exciting than reading computer code."
