Homer comes home at OCC

“The Odyssey,” Homer’s epic poem about the Greek war hero Odysseus, who endures major obstacles on his way home to his wife and children after fighting the 10-year Trojan War, will be performed at Orange Coast College tonight.

The play, which was created by Gary Stickel, an archaeologist from Los Angeles, and Irini Vallera-Rickerson, an art history professor at OCC, will be staged at the Robert B. Moore Theatre.

Tickets cost $10 and will go on sale at 6:45 p.m. The performance will begin at 7 p.m. and run about 90 minutes.

The proceeds will go toward student scholarships at OCC.

“This is going to be fun for everybody,” Vallera-Rickerson said. “It’s a winning situation because we’re raising money and we’ll be showcasing one of the greatest poems in history.”

The actors all hail from Los Angeles, Vallera-Rickerson said. Some of them are professional, she said. Others are trying to break into the field.

The costumes are going to be one of the highlights of the play, she said.

And let’s not forget the characters: the Cyclops, Siren, Odysseus and Penelope, his wife, who waits for her husband to return to the island of Ithaca after a decade away.

The Cyclops, in the poem, which was written some time toward the end of the 8th century B.C., were giants who had one eye in their foreheads.

They were a “wild and lawless tribe” that lived in great caves on the “three-cornered island” which scholars believe is called Sicily today, Vallera-Rickerson said.

The particular Cyclops who trapped Odysseus and his men in his cave was named Polyphemus. He was the son of Poseidon, who in Greek mythology is the ruler of the sea with his trident.

The Sirens were three female monsters who also lived on an island, Vallera-Rickerson said.

“They were beautiful human-like females from the waist up and great birds with talons from the waist down,” she said. “They could fly. They sang songs that were incredibly beautiful and mesmerizing so they could lure sailors in their ships to step ashore, and when they did, the Sirens would eat them ... ” she said.

As for Odysseus, his name means “angry” in ancient Greek.

“He was angry at the gods and goddesses who kept him from returning home to his kingdom on Ithaca Island and to his beautiful wife and queen, Penelope,” she said.

For more information, go to www.homericproject.com.