Poetry on Stage: The Cure at Troy by Seamus Heaney

The personal and the political collide in Sophocles’ play when the Greeks abandon their wounded comrade, Philoctetes, only to find that they need his bow to bring their long war with the Trojans to an end. Seamus Heaney’s powerful 1991 translation weighs the value of personal integrity against loyalty to one’s community and highlights this ancient tragedy’s provocative resonances with the troubles in Northern Ireland and our own conflict in Iraq. Bernard Sahlins directs a cast of Chicago’s finest actors in a staged reading.