Homer would’ve been proud of these storytellers

There was a time when all you had to do to experience the saga of the Trojan War -- the epic conflict which spawned both “The Iliad” and “The Odyssey” -- was to plop down in front of a solitary, possibly blind storyteller. Then someone committed Homer’s words to the written page and, more recently, the video screen, removing the story’s immediacy. But now two Brits are reclaiming the story’s oral tradition.

“We discovered, to our eternal surprise, there is a great groundswell of interest for theatrical retellings of ‘The Odyssey,’ ” says actor Daniel Morden, who is reviving one of the oldest performing arts along with storyteller Hugh Lupton.

After riding the oral resurgence far and wide across Europe, the pair is bringing its grass-roots Trojan War telling to the Getty Villa as part of a two-day marathon of both Homeric epics. Before the show, guests will have an hour to peruse a gallery dedicated to art of the Trojan War. “Being surrounded by the art will echo though the stories, lending more depth,” Lupton says.

Charged with metaphoric resonance, “The Odyssey” serves as a timeless tale of a returning soldier struggling to reintegrate into civilian society. But also, Morden says, Odysseus functions as an everyman coming to terms with old age and losing everything -- virility, family, military camaraderie -- by which he once defined himself.

“It’s like a story from the Bible that you can hear again throughout life, always finding more corners and new insights,” says Morden.

Morden and Lupton want to liberate the stories from their now canonized texts because “stories make a different journey from the ear to the brain than from the eye to the brain,” says Lupton. “It’s much more emotionally charged.”

Alternating parts in a hypnotic duet on a barren stage, Lupton and Morden rely on little more than gesture and vocal modulation to conjure crowded battles, boisterous revelry and tumultuous sea voyages. And because Morden and Lupton don’t work off a script, each recitation varies slightly, imparting a fresh immediacy. That’s because both memorized the text as a slide show of mental images around which they weave language as they go. “There’s a strange, almost telepathic thing that happens,” says Lupton. “When you see a picture in your mind’s eye, the audience sees it as well.”

-- Mindy.Farabee@latimes.com

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THE TROJAN WAR

WHERE: The Getty Villa, 17985 Pacific Coast Highway, Pacific Palisades

WHEN: “The Iliad”: 8 p.m., Fri.-Sat., “The Odyssey”: 3 p.m. Sat. all-ages matinee

PRICE: $10 adults, $5 children.

INFO: (310) 440-7300, www.getty.edu