Hyperfocus of the Week: Writing the Trojan War in 1000 words or less

For my LARPing class next week, the kids will be reenacting the battle for Troy. Technically we are starting with Eris and the apple and ending with “rescuing” Helen (LeAnn the office manager), but the majority of the battles take place once my soldiers arrive outside of the city of Troy (the lunch courtyard). 

Each class either focuses on a skill or a specific battle, and in general the class had required a lot of prep work. While this week my bestie Rob is coming in to teach sword skills, I had to have my parent letter and script completed to hand/email out for tomorrow’s class.  

Each parent letter has a summary of the battle we are LARPing, along with some recommendations for supplementary learning so the kids have some context for what we are doing. This week I recommended the podcast Greeking Out, which is a kid centric retelling of largely Greek mythology. My kids have binged every episode at least once. Of course my middle three were also the only people younger than me at the opening show of The Odyssey at the Rose Theater a few months ago…still! Kids love mythology! 

I also had some recommended YouTube videos on the subject, which meant that I had to watch plenty of options to make sure they were recommendation worthy—and age appropriate. I finally settled on one from the British Museum, one from National Geographic, and a couple of Crash Course episodes. Crash Course is a high school level series of history videos that are go-to’s for most of us teachers. 

There was also some crafting involved in all of this. I’ve encouraged families to make their own LARPing swords and costumes. Moss requested a turned handle for his sword, which was easy enough but then I hollowed out the end and resined in a dragon eye and added gold and silver leaf to the hand guard because I had the stuff lying around. He is quite pleased with the result. 

Violet was kind enough to make tunics for the two boxes of “Barbarian Horde” that will be playing the villains this semester…I discovered last week that the less fighting my students are doing against other people the better. $10 at goodwill and hopefully my injury rates will go down. 

Tonight I wrote my script. I have a few small speaking parts that I will dole out tomorrow which should shape the battle and break up the action. Best laid plans and all that. I left out the child murder, bacchanalias, trying to feed people to wolves, and most of the involvement of the pantheon as we only have 30-35 minutes. 

I left in Eris and the apple; glossed over if Helen was captured, magically spelled, or just wanted an adventure; tossed in raids around the city of Troy and a training montage. Then we go straight to the making of the Horse which the kids will draw on cardboard before sneaking into the temple of Athena (or next to it in our case), ransacking the city, yoinking Cassandra, and finally rescuing Helen. 

In some ways I feel guilty for minimizing a great epic into half an hour; the conversation about Helen and agency could be a semester class in itself, but I have to remind myself that the point of this class is for kids to work out some energy while falling in love with history.  Examinations of beauty as soft power can come later. 

I hope you all have exciting and fulfilling weeks! See you Wednesday-ish.