The Names We Gave Him is a musical I wrote with late composer and friend Peter Foley. It is now available for listening and perusal via the Peter Foley Music Project.
The opportunity to return to Turkey and Troy with the U Penn classics seminar Homer and Troy, which I’d last been a guest professor on just as the world was shutting down in March 2020, was something I simply couldn’t pass up, even though it meant leaving NY through most of the run of Kissing the Floor.
The streets of New York are empty; even mighty 42nd Street is dimmed and silent. At noon on a week day, the vaulted ceiling of Grand Central echoes with no footsteps at all. Down through the financial canyons at the base of the island, the spring wind blows unimpeded by a single person. This hollowed out, stilled world is like nothing we have ever experienced before. What are we to make of it? Lately I find myself remembering
I was on the road in a big way until mid-March and only recently realized just how lucky I was to get home. It meant foregoing the last leg of my trip, which would have been to Greece, but I did manage to get myself out of Istanbul on one of the last flights possible. The idea that…
When Michael Kahn approached me with the commission for this adaptation of Aeschylus’ trilogy of plays, The Oresteia, he gave me surprisingly few limitations. He told me to trust my instincts and to feel free to step as far from the source material as I needed in order to make a new version of these ancient plays for our times.
"When you’re starting from a cold stove, lay the fire according to the principles that have lasted over the centuries, namely: clear the way for the new..."