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Athena: "They used to call us 'The Gods,' but times have changed. That name doesn't mean as much anymore. We had to modernize, to redefine our role in your secular, digital society ... You know, we gods like to mingle and merge." 

A troubled, homeless war vet, who has episodes of dissociative identity thinking he's Ajax of the Trojan War, listens to a sharp-tongued woman who flits in and out of the ex-GI's East Bay street encampment, saying she was once the Grey-Eyed Goddess of Wisdom, but now works with the Agency, fine-tuning the fate of mortals through AI ... 

"AI. Syndrome! I just invented a neologism for people like you. You have the Artificial Intelligence Syndrome! ... You're both invisible and a control freak," the hapless ex-soldier-on-the-street blurts out to the sometime goddess, social engineer. "Are you human, nonhuman, biological, artificial, a super intelligent entity, a synthetic media creation?" 

Elsewhere--or at the same place, or another but interpenetrating place and time (though the play's set "somewhere between South Berkeley and Oakland")--the original Ajax fighting at Troy has just come out of his episode of madness, right out of Sophocles' 2500 year old tragedy named for him, blown out when the Greeks gave the dead Achilles' armor to Odysseus instead of him, as his concubine & slave Tecmessa tries to talk him down: 

Tecmessa: "Nobody died last night. You went mad and slaughtered all our animals. It's in your head." 

Ajax: "If it is in my head, it must be real." 

Giulio Perrone, founder of Berkeley's Inferno Theatre, staging original and other plays since 2010, author, director and designer of 'Ajax, Our Heroes ... ' spoke a few days after opening about the new play, its meaning and this first production: 

"I grew up with Greek literature. Ajax was one of my favorite heroes of the Trojan War ... You have to amend your own ideas of heroes, after not thinking of them while growing up as conquerors, slaughterers ... or of having slaves and concubines. 

"We all go through that process with our own culture. You don't think at first of the Founding Fathers in America having slaves, concubines ... 

"And then to see the death of George Floyd, institutional racism with our own eyes ... 

"And what the system does with heroes, shaming them, making them disappear. 

"My Ajax [the play and the ex-GI in the play who thinks he's Ajax] talks about modern America, is obsessed with the Constitution ans George Floyd's killing ... Athena in the play works for the Agency. You don't know what any agency does. She's into AI, codifying behavior through predictive technology." 

The dialogues between Athena and the others are barbed and witty. The scenes, or sequences of action that mingle with words, go by quickly, but with the same wit & stamp of relevance as Athena does, flitting & speaking back and forth on the stage, and on and off it. 

The different aspects of the story mesh, separate and come back together in different combinations, but it's superlucid throughout, casting light on the interlocking yet expanding crises of our time, of here right now. 

The ensemble of four carries Perrone's fascinating, quick-witted script with both force and grace: 

Canberk Varli as the homeless ex-soldier who identifies too closely with Ajax, his PTSD set off by images of George Floyd's killing on TV ... 

Joshua Morris-Williams as the Ajax of myth and epic ... 

Rebecca Grintsaig as Tecmessa, Ajax's slave and concubine ... 

Solange Hilfinger-Pardo as Athena, who is always everywhere and elsewhere ... 

The three cast members besides Varli also play homeless immigrants in or outside of the encampment, adding dimension as well as humor and pathos to the scene, dialogue and action. Hilfinger-Pardo also plays a doctor for the immigrants, as sassy as her Athena, but a unique character, too. 

They act alone onstage, in monologues, and together in dialogue and in action with fine physical theater ensemble work in the spirit of Perrone's Quantum sense of staging: "Each puts something personal into character and the story--and like quantum particles, react to each other in a circularity [of story and energy]." 

The excellent lighting design is by Danielle Ferguson. 

Perrone's many costumes and props become true scenic elements, dynamic in the way they help define character and action. 

"You see the sadness of what war leaves behind--dead people, slavery, economic dependence ... 

"And there are the traces of what we find and what we leave behind ... And words, which have consequences. If we want to get rid of biases, we should think of what we talk about." 

I've followed Inferno Theatre since their first play, by Perrone, 'Galileo's Daughters,' reviewing most of their shows, which have had a high level of both meaning and of enjoyable physical theatricality. It's been a unique and special experience over the past 14 years. 

'Ajax, Our Heroes ... ' is the most ambitious, the most theatrically engaged of Inferno and Perrone's work--and of whatever else I've seen over the past few years in the Bay Area. 

* 

'Ajax, Our Heroes, Our America'--Inferno Theatre--running Saturdays (8 pm) and Sundays (7 pm) through November 3rd at Studio 12 in the Sawtooth Building, 2525 Eighth Street, south of Dwight Way, in Berkeley. Tickets: $30 @ www.infernotheatre.org --or https://givebutter.com/aH2BWO Questions? Call (510)-824-0449 or write infernotheatrecompany@gmail.com 

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