The first part of the Troy trilogy came into being when the Dutch writer/director, Koos Terpstra wanted to stage Andromache by Euripides. He decided to adapt this tragedy. In 1988, this adaptation became an independent play and was staged by the Toneelschuur from Haarlem.

With her enormous will to live, Andromache held Terpstra’s interest. With Neoptolemos , the second part of the trilogy, the writer focuses on another episode of her life: the first months after the fall of Troy. For this prototype of victim of the first heroic war in world literature, the war is not over. It will linger on in her plans for revenge and in the hatred she feels for her master Neoptolemos. He is tired of fighting and looks for a solution, a compromise between deadly enemies. Terpstra’s Neoptolemos was staged in 1991 and edited by Fact Rotterdam.

The third part of the trilogy, Troy , was written in the summer of 1994. This part plays in the year before the fall of Troy and treats the question of guilt emanating from an outwardly innocent woman’s perspective.

In the Troy Trilogy , a forgotten war story is written: one of a woman in a non-passive role, as survivor, as victim. The Troy Trilogy is a rewriting from the perspective of the individual.

Mythological background of the characters:

Andromache is the daughter of Aëtion, the king of Cilical Thebe. She marries Hector. In the Trojan war, her father, seven brothers and her husband are killed, all by the hand of Achilles. After the fall of Troy, her five-year-old son, Astyanax, is killed and she herself is taken as war booty by Achilles’ son Neoptolemos. She becomes his slave and lover and has with him her second son Molossus (in another tale they have three sons together). After the death of Neoptolemos she marries Helenos, a brother of Hector and twin brother of Cassandra. Together they rule over the Greek Epiros.

Neoptolemos is the only son of Achilles. After the death of his father, he goes to war. He does his utmost to be worthy of his father. From Odysseus he has received the armour of Achilles. He is one of the soldiers that are locked into the Trojan Horse what leads finally to the Greek victory over Troy. After the fall of Troy, he throws Hector and Andromache’s son, Astyanax, down from the walls of Troy. At the division of the war booty he receives Hectors widow, Andromache. As concerns his adventures, the stories told differ somewhat. Most writers claim that he settles in Epiros or in the land of his father, Phthia, and that Menelaos gives him his daughter Hermione as wife, notwithstanding the fact that she is already engaged to Orestes. The marriage remaines barren, in contrast to the relation of Neoptolemos with Andromache. Whilst Neoptolemos, at a certain time, is on a trip to the sanctuary of Delphi, Hermione tries to get rid of her rival, but her plans are crossed by the old Peleus, grandfather of Neoptolemos. Orestes, however, comes to the rescue of his former fiancée: he kills Neoptolemos in Delphi and takes Hermione away with him.