OEDIPUS
The tragic story of Oedipus and his family is well known and often cited in both theatrical and psychological discourses. High tragedy at its best featuring oracles, prophesies, would be infanticide, monster riddles, plagues and pestilence.
As young scholars and artists of theatre, however, our concern is not confined to the subject of the play, but the stimulus the script, with its rich and provocative images, presents to theatre-makers today. This production by a group of nine final year students aims towards a staging that relies on improvisation harnessed to delivery of heightened text, intercutting fragments of T.S.Eliot’s great poems “The Wasteland” and “Four Quartets” with an experiment in shadow play. The action shifts between marks on a two dimensional paper surface and the three dimensional plane inhabited and shared by unmasked actors and the audience.
A collaborative production developed by the ensemble of a 4th year research project course offered by Sarah Roberts, renown South African theatre designer and a senior member of the Drama Department, it’s an attempt at identifying ways in which an iconoclastic production may be theatrically innovative and, we hope, exciting and appealing to a contemporary audience interested in challenging tradition.
As a stranger from Corinth, Oedipus is the one man who could liberate the city of Thebes from the demands of the monstrous Sphinx by answering her riddle. This single act brings him renown and power. It is he who takes responsibility for avenging the death of Laius to whose rule and marriage bed he has succeeded to in order to rid the city from a plague. Ironically, while he believes - as ruler of the city of Thebes - that he can lay claim to the title tyrannos, Oedipus is no stranger, but Theban-born, son and husband to Jocasta, Laius’ widow, father-brother to the children they have borne, and ultimately both avenger, “father-killer and father-supplanter”. The myth and the network of relations and ethical transgressions that it sets up – parricide and incest – are declared by the prophet Tiresias in the first major confrontation of the play. Tiresias repeats his accusation three times, so we, as audience can be left in little doubt as to what Oedipus’ commitment to seeking out the killer in the interests of restorative justice and healing truth must entail. What is important is how the story is revealed and how the action is presented.
Oedipus Tyrannos is a play that can speak to us, over the distance of two and a half millennia, in a cogent albeit allegorical manner about issues of leadership and accountability in South Africa today.
Not suitable for children.
Free parking is available in Senate House; the entrance is on Jorissen Street, Braamfontein
PRODUCTION: OedIpus
VENUE: Wits Amphitheatre, East Campus, Braamfontein
SEASON: 08- 10 May; 13 – 16 May @ 19:30
RUNNING TIME: 65 minutes, no interval
BOOKING: www.webtickets.co.za
Full price online = R 45:00; discounts for pensioners and students online = R 30:00; block bookings of ten and more = R 30:00
Full price at the door = R 50:00; discounts for pensioners and students at the door = R 40:00; block bookings of ten and more = R 30:00
WitsTix = R 10:00 online and R 15:00 at the door: Thursday 08:05:2014 & 15:05:2014
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