Plot Summary
The Odyssey Experience is an abridged telling of Homer’s epic poem The Odyssey. After the carnage of the Trojan War, clever Odysseus, a Grecian general responsible for the Trojan horse and the Greeks victory, makes his way home from Troy to Ithaca, and encounters many obstacles along the way.
The Odyssey Experience opens with players invoking the muse and welcoming the students as participants in the theatrical experience.
We then shift to the hall of the gods on Mount Olympus. Odysseus's great ally, Athena, the goddess of wisdom, begs her father, Zeus, to protect him. Zeus tells her he can not, because Odysseus has angered too many other gods.
Meanwhile, back in Ithaca, Odysseus wife, Penelope, and their son, Telemachus, are struggling to cope with an invasion of unruly, impolite suitors, who assume Odysseus is dead and want to marry Penelope, and subsequently take the throne. Because of Greek rules of hospitality they cannot be thrown out, and they refuse to leave until Penelope agrees to marry one of them. She, however, has faith that Odysseus will return, and refuses.
Athena can no longer contain herself, she flies to the side of Odysseys hoping to aid him on his journey home from The Trojan War. He arrives on the island of the Cyclops, a race of giant, one-eyed, man-eating monsters. Odysseus and his crew are captured by the Cyclops Polyphemus but is able to overcome the monster. Odysseus and his men stab the giant beast in the eye and then escape from the cave. By doing so, however, they anger Polyphemus’s father, who happens to be the great god of the sea, Poseidon—an unfortunate enemy to have if you are on a long ocean voyage. Their ship is thrown far off course.
Odysseus and his men arrive on the island of Aiolia, the god of the winds, who pities the sailors, and grants them a secret gift in a silvery bag, revealing its contents only to Odysseus. He warns them not to look inside the bag, and tells Odysseus to keep his sailors from opening it. Despite his efforts to stay awake, Odysseus finally falls asleep after nine days of travel, and his sailors, too curious to contain themselves, open the bag. They release its contents, the wind, which instantly blows them back to where they started. Aiolia is very angry at their disrespect of his gift, and refuses to replace it. Odysseus must then travel to Hades, the underworld populated by the dead to ask advice from the blind soothsayer, Tiresias, about how to get home.
The voyage continues and the crew is forced to sail past the island of the Sirens, who tempt men toward their rocks to wreck their ships. Odysseus orders the sailors to protect themselves by putting wax in their ears, but ties himself to the mast of his ship so he can hear the tempting cries of the Sirens. Having passed this challenge, the men face the sea monsters Scylla and Charybdis, and while a few of the crew must be sacrificed, the rest are finally able to escape.
Next, the crew arrives on the island of Helios, the sun god, where they have been warned not to eat his cattle. Only Odysseus resists the temptation and the others meet their demise. Alone, Odysseus continues his voyage home.
Back in Ithaca, the situation with the suitors has reached a breaking point. Penelope announces a contest, saying that whoever can string Odysseus’s bow will be her husband. When an old beggar appears and the suitors mistreat him, Telemachus decides something must be done, and the contest begins at once. A number of suitors fail, and then the old beggar succeeds. Removing his disguise, the beggar reveals that he is Odysseus. He and the suitors draw their swords as Odysseus seeks revenge.
Finally, joyfully reunited with his family, having vanquished the suitors, Odysseus must walk inland until he comes to a place where no one has seen the ocean, and no one can identify an oar. When he does, he plants the oar as an offering to appease Poseidon, and his adventure comes to an end.