Essays, Stories, Adventures, Dreams
Chronicles of a Footloose Forester
By Dick Pellek

Troy, You Outlive Your Literary Demise

Harking back to college days and the tiny speaking role in a play took on an extra burden for this dream-inspired chronicle.  It might not have emerged if the Footloose Forester had not recorded and viewed the film entitled Troy on his video tape recorder.  The mythical Trojan War has persisted in literature and film partly because the story line is so unique, but when the 2014 film starring Brad Pitt threw in some characters like Achilles as a participant and his role as commander of sword-wielding troops at the gates of Troy, the curiosity became overwhelming.

Achilles, one of the prominent fixtures in Greek mythology, probably did not appear in earlier versions of the tales about the Trojan War.  So it was that the Footloose Forester quietly began to research the basis of the myths about Achilles, Troy, and the Trojan Horse.  A fabricated horse fashioned from wood should have been called the Greek Horse, because they built it and used it to gain access to inside the walls of the city of Troy.  And that is why a bit of elementary research is fundamental, even to explain plot lines in fictional tales of Greek mythology.

Resplendent in his genuine beard as a Trojan sailor, the small bit-part actor known as the Footloose Forester really enjoyed his role in Tiger at the Gates, a two-act play written by Jean Giraudoux in 1935 and subsequently translated from the French.  At the time, he was prompted by the director to play the role of The Mathematician, but he demurred, mostly because the juicy speaking part was a bit too long for him.  He did want to play that role of the Mathematician who asked another character in the play, "tell me, what do you think are my faults?"; and the answer was, "you are arrogant, you have no talent, and your breath stinks."  Also, the Footloose Forester did not want to be embarrassed and reminded of his meagre grasp of mathematics.  The part of a bearded Trojan sailor with not much to say, was just fine.  

Achilles, Day 1 of the Trojan War? Or in Year 10? 

Our version of Tiger at the Gates had to cut out some of the characters because we did not have enough student actors to fill the stage with a full cast. Our director did a marvelous job with the cast that showed up. Nobody in the cast was Achilles, just one of the curious items that Footloose Forester had to research, just to make sense of the Brad Pitt role in the 2014 movie Troy.  We had a male actor who played Paris and female who played Helen, but it was unimagined that someday, in the movies, that Paris would shoot Achilles full of arrows, one of which would lodge in his heel.  Not knowing the full story is perhaps my Achilles Heel.