The Cure at Troy

Heartwood presents a staged reading of Seamus Heaney's "The Cure at Troy." The play is an adaptation by the famed Irish writer Heaney of Sophocles' Greek tragedy "Philoctetes." This production is directed by resident company member Steve Shema.

The Sophocles play on which "The Cure at Troy" is based was written in the fifth century, B.C. It tells the story of the outcast hero, Philoctetes, whom the Greeks left marooned on the island of Lemnos and forgot about until the closing stages of the Siege of Troy.  Abandoned because of a serious wound to his foot, Philoctetes possesses an invincible bow without which the Greeks cannot win the Trojan War.  They are forced to return to Lemnos and ask Philoctetes for his help.

 Heaney's adaptation explores the relations between public and private morality and dramatizes the conflict between personal integrity and political expediency. It shows the ways in which victims of injustice can become as devoted to the contemplation of their wounds as the perpetrators are to their own justification.