Bloody Luck: Hans Altwies Steps Up at the Rep

At the April 9 world premiere of Seattle Rep’s An Iliad, Hans Altwies will go onstage a nobody, and come out a star. Well, not a total nobody. Altwies is a Footlight Award-winning veteran of most major Seattle stages. He cofounded New Century Theatre Company, the most raved-about new troupe in town.

But it was Denis O’Hare, the Tony and Obie-winning Broadway, TV and movie star (Milk, Duplicity), who spent two years preparing to star in An Iliad, the play he cowrote. When O’Hare got a job as the vampire King of Mississippi in HBO’s hit series True Blood, though, Altwies was cast in the one-man show at the last minute.

How does it feel to step into such big shoes – alone? “It’s fucking weird,” says Altwies. “I can’t do this! I’m so not the right person!” Actually, he may be just the right person, since he played Odysseus in the Rep’s 2008 sequel of sorts to the Iliad, The Cure at Troy.

In his dramatic opening scene in An Iliad, as Altwies describes it, his character is “this poet traveling through time, condemned to tell this war story he can’t stand reliving, as he does every time he tells it. He bursts into the theatre, sees the audience, and that’s the first he knows about this night’s storytelling.”

Altwies hasn’t seen O’Hare’s brilliant performance on True Blood, but he has promised to watch it. “I haven’t had a TV for nine years. But I’ll get one and watch it! Good suggestion.” •