“Have you ever seen an angry god?”
These were the words spoken by Patrick Osteen on April 14 as he sat on a chair center stage in Davie High’s auditorium. The question was addressed to a room full of sophomores who sat their seats watching the man with a mixture of awe and confusion. Osteen’s words evoked images of the gods of Greek mythology and the battles waged by heroes like Achilles, all as part of the legendary Trojan War, a conflict related most famously in Homer’s Greek epic “The Iliad.” That same conflict, or at least a modern update of it, was the subject for the morning’s performance.
The opportunity to bring a taste of Greek theater to Davie High came as a surprise for most students and staff, though plans for this performance had been in the works for a few weeks prior to its official announcement thanks to the efforts of John Marshall, the Digital Teaching and Learning Specialist for Davie County Schools. Through a conversation with the directors of RhinoLeap, a professional theater company based out of Asheboro, North Carolina, Marshall leaped at the chance to have one of their performers come out to the high school for this Monday morning trek through the Trojan War.
Enter Patrick Osteen. Osteen lives in Asheboro, NC, and founded RhinoLeap with his father, Tom, in 2015. He now assists in running the company as the Artistic Director. RhinoLeap is a professional theater company that has garnered the respect of many and national attention for its various intricate performances, including “Paris Through the Window,” “Company K,” “Leaving Eden,” and many more, including “The Iliad”—the performance that Osteen brought to Davie High.
The pitch for Osteen’s performance of “The Iliad”—or, in this case, “An Iliad”—is based around a simple idea: “A poet walks into a bar. Orders a drink. Then waits. Once the silence comes, he begins. Through poetry and humor, physicality and rage, the poet takes the ancient tale of the Trojan War and brings it crashing down into the middle of the modern world.”
Going into the event, many students and staff were under the impression that the performance would consist of multiple actors and were surprised to find only one man waiting for them once they arrived at the auditorium. Despite this, Osteen was able to skillfully craft his own art form by delivering this performance alone on stage, without any props, tech support, or stage equipment required, and he surely didn’t disappoint by any means. After a brief introduction from Chad Edwards, Davie’s theater arts teacher, Osteen didn’t waste any time as he began to tell the story of the darkest episode of the Trojan War.
The Trojan War took place around the 12th or 13th century BCE. The conflict took place between the early Greeks who laid siege to the city of Troy. The war that has since been celebrated through “The Iliad” of Homer and “The Aeneid” by Virgil, the latter being the source of the famous Trojan Horse. “The Iliad” focuses on the final weeks of the war, primarily narrating the wrath of Achilles, “the greatest warrior that ever lived,” according to Osteen’s narration. In one notably comic moment from the performance, Osteen asked the audience to name who they thought were some of the greatest modern-day warriors. In contrast to the ancient Achilles, Davie’s sophomores claimed that the “greatest warrior” could be either famous NBA player Lebron James or even Steve from “Minecraft.”
Regardless of who would claim this title now, “The Iliad” makes it clear that as Achilles battled Hector, a prized Trojan prince, the city of Troy suffered greatly. This cinematic story of revenge, love, heartache, and fate shapes the story—a story of a city fated to fall and warriors who are, unfortunately, destined to die.
“No man alive, nor coward, has escaped fate,” Osteen said.
The performance’s length surpassed an hour, leading some students to be quite inattentive in their seats, though this changed when Osteen began to recite a lengthy list of all of history’s wars, in chronological order. It was then that the audience truly began to sit up in their seats as Osteen walked through the aisles and his voice crescendoed as he drew a straight line from the Trojan War to Ukraine and Russia, Israel and Palestine. While not every aspect of the performance grabbed the attention of every student, many cited this moment as being the show’s standout. Unsurprisingly, this section of the tale elicited the loudest applause from the audience.
Through the art of masterful storytelling, superb memorization, and various artistic talents, Osteen’s performance managed to make both the excitement and the tragedy of the Trojan War come to life for Davie High’s sophomores.
