The stars have aligned for Homer’s tales this coming January 2018 in Groton, Massachusetts. Two fine independent schools, Lawrence Academy and Groton School, have invited Odds Bodkin to perform his Homeric classics two weeks apart.
First, on January 12th at 6 p.m., Lawrence Academy hosts The Odyssey: Belly of the Beast, Odds’ 75-minute storytelling powerhouse tale, as a performance for students and open to the public. Haunting 12-string guitar music, grafted adroitly onto Bodkin’s characters, plus narrative and uncanny vocal effects, all combine to take listeners through the beginning of Odysseus’s wild journey. Longing for his wife and son after ten years of war, he’s homeward bound from Troy at last, but the Fates intervene. The tale includes the Fall of Troy, Death on the Beach, the Great Storm, Isle of the Lotus Eaters and lastly, the deadly Cave of the Cyclops.
But Homer’s other great work, The Iliad, goes back in time to before Troy falls. And so Groton School has invited Odds to perform The Iliad: Book I, his hour-long psychodrama with music that explores everything from insulted goddesses to furious men at loggerheads on the battlefield. The show is at 8 p.m. on January 26th, 2017. Characters for Zeus, Hera, Aphrodite, Athena, Achilles, Agamemnon and a host of others bring the tale to life, along with Olympian themes performed on 12-string guitar.
Two of the greatest tales of Western literature, performed in modern storytelling style along with background lore, are coming to Groton, MA.
If you can’t be in New England next month, you can still experience them as an audio and a video, here at Odds Bodkin’s Shop.