The Oedipus Cycle - Notes from the Director
I love the classics. There is something about the wisdom of the playwrights who are considered classic that make me feel confident that their thoughts MATTER … because we still study them after hundreds (if not thousands) of years. So, you will find that I am drawn to Greek plays, and to Shakespeare. And this play that you will see tonight is one of the greatest ever written.
Sophocles wrote Antigone first. Then Oedipus the King, and finally Oedipus at Kolonos. Even though the Greeks wrote plays in trilogies, none of these scripts were written for each other - they are each from a different set of trilogies, written 36 years apart in total. BUT - as is the case here - they are often published together as “The Oedipus Cycle” because they all have to do with Oedipus, his fate, and the city of Thebes. (They are also known as Sophocles’ Theban Plays.) These plays have truly been some of the most influential plays of all time in Western Theatre - and they are 2400 years old.
Oedipus the King set the standard for what we consider TRAGEDY. Aristotle wrote his Poetics - where he lays out what makes “Good Drama” - 50 years after Sophocles died. Aristotle was convinced that OtK was the pinnacle of tragedy, and he used it to provide the “proof” of what tragedy is in his arguments. Many, MANY words have been written on this - far too many for me to go into in Director notes. Suffice it to say that if you listen to the words of the characters, and see how neatly Sophocles wraps it all up into the ultimate tragedy, you will be able to see why the story is one of those that has survived all these millenia.
Oedipus at Kolonos is altogether different. I have seen it referred to as a B-side deep cut of your favorite band’s best vinyl album. (YES - I know I am old. “What’s a B-side, Bucher?” Sigh.) Not many people know about it, and it is rarely performed. But for me - there is an important reason to do the play. It provides closure to Oedipus, it clearly sets up the next play, and the words of Theseus are important to us now. At one point, he states: “I want my life to shine through my actions, not through my words.” Here is the wisdom of ancient Greece, and it still applies now. And THAT is why we still study these ancient texts. Wisdom is Wisdom - it does not change.
Antigone is probably the most famous of these plays. It is a protest play - and it has been staged in many different contexts. At its core, the play focuses on one question: Should you obey Man’s (the Government’s) Law or God’s law? The Greeks had a certain mindset to the answer to this question. Sophocles himself answers it at the end of the play. But we still do discuss this same issue over and over again - which shows the consistency of man. Society changes, mores change, but the questions that human beings struggle with are THE SAME. Over 2400 years, we still find ourselves asking the same questions that the Greeks did.
Prof. Robert Bagg wrote the translation that you are seeing tonight. I stumbled across it when I was looking for a play to do 6 years ago when I was working at PHMS. Too often, you get too many “thee”s and “thou”s and other “ancient sounding” texts that are just too difficult to access, especially with high school students. This translation had none of that. It is very modern in the language and grammar that is used and I truly appreciate his work. As it is briefly noted, I adapted it for production - if we performed every word of the translation, you would have been sitting here for seven hours - no one wants that. So I edited as best I could, trying to get it down to an appropriate performance length. I also added the character of Aristotle, just to provide context for people who wouldn’t have familiarity with the works. This was done with Prof. Bagg’s permission - I truly appreciate everything he has done and allows us to do.
Finally - WHY are we doing this play? Because - first and foremost - I want to … NEED to give my students the opportunity to DO theatre. Just reading about it, or watching a video of a performance - no. That is not theatre. Theatre is a LIVE performance done in front of a LIVE audience. The give-and-take from actor to audience is not replaceable or transferable to any other medium. It is the actual performance that the student-actor learns self-confidence, collaboration, communication skills - and that is what we work so hard toward - to give students that opportunity.
