Word: woodruff
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...think we really just tried to tell a story,” says Robert Woodruff, director of Highway Ulysses, the new play which premiered last weekend at Cambridge’s American Repertory Theatre (ART). Indeed, the musical tells one of the greatest stories literature has to offer, that of The Odyssey...
With its fairly straightforward approach to the original subject matter, Woodruff says that the project is really about the artist who created it all, Rinde Eckert, and the versatile talents of the company in residence at the ART. Highway Ulysses was born from a song-cycle written by Eckert about Vietnam veterans and problems with rage and violence that resulted from their war experiences...
...same time, Woodruff was searching for a composer to write a work especially for the ART. He found Eckert, an award winning composer and lyricist who had already had several successes in New York and San Francisco and was already very well known in contemporary music circles. The two then worked on expanding Eckert’s original piece, adding a libretto as well as a plot. After reading George Lord’s work about The Odyssey’s impact on modern society, Woodruff noticed the parallels between his own story and Homer’s classic...
What Eckert and Woodruff leave us with is an appropriate, salient message in this time of impending war. To paraphrase Ulysses’ intense iteration in the haunting final trio of the show, “For every Hero who comes home, a thousand more die in vain...
...though, Woodruff is correct in saying that the show rests on Eckert’s score and book. Eckert’s music takes the audience deep into the soul of violence and the horror...