Epic puppet theater by Tom Lee at the Buffalo Seminary, Hoplite Diary is a retelling of Homer’s Iliad from the perspective of a lone Greek warrior (a hoplite). The performance is a large-scale work that incorporates shadow puppetry, video animation, bunraku-style puppets and mechanical wooden stage machinery. According to press materials, “Hoplite Diary follows a puppet hoplite’s journey through the Trojan War in a series of dreamlike and lyrical episodes. After traveling across the Aegean, he arrives at Troy and is overcome with longing for the family he left behind. During a violent battle between the Greek and Trojan forces, he is wounded and, after collapsing from exhaustion, witnesses a scene between the Trojan prince Hector and his wife high on the ramparts of the city. The third act of the play tells the hoplite’s return to Greece. The gods who manage the fates of the great heroes of Homer’s epic regard the anonymous hoplite as an afterthought and he becomes a symbol of the despair and waste of any war in any time.” Original music for the piece has been created by Jurij Fedynskyj and Ilya Temkin, working with the Ukrainian bandore and the Russian gully—instruments used in Eastern European epic storytelling. Lee and his company will be in residence at Buffalo Seminary for two weeks.

December 8, 9, 10 at 7 pm; December 10 and 11 at 2 pm. Buffalo Seminary, 205 Bidwell Pkwy

(885-6780, ask for Toni Wilson) $15