OEDIPUS by SOPHOCLES in a new version by Wayne Jordan
Let the day Finish What the night Began
Shoot an arrow of hope Into the heart Of this broken city
The city of Thebes hides a secret crime. Punished by the Gods, the citizens seek protection. They turn to their King. He saved them before. Can he save them again?
Sophocles’ tragedy is an elaborate meeting of political drama, murder mystery and psychological thriller.
Wayne Jordan’ s new version of Oedipus invites us to confront vital questions of who we are and how we live together.
The story of Oedipus was familiar to most citizens of the Greek city states in the period before Sophocles began to consider the legend a fitting subject for drama. Indeed, Sophocles’ older contemporary Aeschylus( 525BC – 456BC) had devised his own trilogy of plays based on the legend but only his Seven Against Thebes has survived. Sophocles( 497BC – 406BC), an eminent citizen, soldier and dramatist who was born in Colonus and lived in nearby Athens, wrote 123 plays but only little more than a handful have survived. He was a member of the triumvirate of great ancient Greek dramatists also including Aeschylus and Euripides. Sophocles’ Theban Trilogy which also includes the plays Oedipus at Colonus and Antigone is clearly his masterpiece. It reaches far beyond mere drama to encompass an entire period of history that has possibly not yet reached conclusion. The fundamental innovations he introduced are still current, still form the basic vocabulary of theatre and narrative art itself.
The first consideration that must have occurred to Sophocles was how to present a story that was so well known to most Greeks, the myth of Oedipus‘ swell foot’.