In the hands of director Marc Beaupré and music designer Stéfan Boucher, The Iliad becomes a choreography of fights, a chant with haunting rhythms. The millennial story of the Trojan War takes on new life, conveyed through the sharp and elegant performances of ten remarkable artists.

Paris’s love for Helen wreaks havoc. The Greeks lay siege to the Trojans to take back the legendary beauty. Achilles, the brave warrior, who an oracle has predicted will either die a hero’s death or grow old in oblivion, is torn between his desire for glory and his fear of death.

Freely adapting Alessandro Baricco’s modern rewrite of Homer’s epic poem, Marc Beaupré populates the stage with a chorus of soldiers, men and women. Reinforcing their dialogue with codified movements, they evoke powerful, all-engulfing images. As for Stéfan Boucher, he steps in as the conductor of the battle, deploying his full arsenal of sound to build this new version of The Iliad.

With Caligula_remix, Dom Juan_uncensored and Hamlet_director’s cut, recently presented by NAC French Theatre, the Terre des Hommes theatre company tackles the classics head-on, rekindling their power through eminently contemporary dramatic writing.