04/07/2026
August 5, 1995: A student group at Swarthmore College, Pig Iron Theatre Company, presented two performances of "The Odyssey" at the Lang Performing Arts Center on campus, prior to taking their new piece to the Edinburgh Festival in Scotland.
According to an article in The Swarthmore College Bulletin by Carol Brevart, the group performed to a "large, enthusiastic audience":
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The name "Pig Iron" . . . was chosen when someone mentioned that pig iron (crude iron) is used to counterbalance stage scenery, to fly it onto and off the set, or to create actual flying effects.
"We thought it was kind of who we are," said Dan Rothenberg '95. "We're interested in poetry and experimental theater, but we also want to be straightforward, honest. The name creates and image of something crude and unpolished but also of flight."
The project that spurred the group to form was a piece called "Cyrano for Two Quartets," with four actors and a string quartet. Directed by Rothenberg in 1994, it was a portrayal of the Cyrano story that synthesized the two art forms of theater and music.
Well received on campus, the group considered venturing with it beyond Swarthmore. The Fringe seemed like an ideal place to start. . . Ultimately, the company decided to develop a new play.
Exploiting the broad spectrum of styles offered by individual members, along with their choreography and playwrighting [sic] skills, under Rothenberg's direction they produced their "Odyssey."
Rothenberg described Homer's epic as "really being full of everything." he said they could relate so many events in their everyday lives to episodes in the epic that they concluded "all the signs were there."
Quinn Bauriedel '94, a co-founder who first generated the idea of going to Edinburgh, stressed collaborative effort to blend diverse individual ideas into one vision. . . Their three-act production contains poetry, jazz and classical music, dance, physical theater, and more.
There are farcical scenes, which characters like Zeus (Nathaniel Reed '95) and Athena (Suli Hollum '97) squabbling while 'back in Ithaca' Penolope's suitors discuss golf; or Poseidon (Dito Van Reigersberg '94), described as a "7-foot god in drag."
Once they determined to go to Edinburgh . . . Bauriedel became Fringe coordinator, gathering information necessary to their participation; Jay Rhoderick '92 was travel coordinator; Rothenberg and Telory Williamson '93 raised funds. Rothenberg's younger brother Jason, a Swarthmore student of visual arts, designed posters.
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Once in Edinburgh (despite giving their first show while still recovering from food poisoning, and in front of an audience of about five people) the company received a rave review from a theater critic at The Scotsman:
"Pig Iron's 'Odyssey' is highly inventive and bursting with colour. Wacky and playful, they have woven together physical theater, comedy, and a creative rendering of the original text incorporating the poetry of Yeats and Sharon Olds."
Swarthmore professor Nathalie Anderson recalled that she left the production "feeling like I've come through a whirlwind of a dream."
On the strength of their good notices, audiences in Edinburgh soon swelled, and their shows became one of the must-see experiences of the entire festival. The Pig Iron troupe returned to Philadelphia determined to stay together - and to start working on a full season.
