OedipusColonus1.0071_Breuer

OedipusColonus1.0071_Breuer

Lee Breuer, The Gospel at Colonus, gospel-music adaptation of Sophocles, music by Bob Telson. First performed 1983, New Wave Festival, Brooklyn Academy of Music, New York. Revived Mar 1988, Lunt-Fontanne Theatre, New York.

ClCv241 students can stream via hummedia.byu.edu. Full script and metadata at Twentieth Century North American Drama (HBLL link)

Review New York Times 3 April 1988, section 2 page 5.

Narrative Gain: Breuer uses Sophoclean text as script, making only minor adjustments; he changes the point of the text remarkably. Whereas Sophocles' 5th-century text, of course, has no message about Christian redemption, per se, Breuer adapts/converts the "pagan" dramatic setting into an American spiritual revival, so that the same narrative now tells how the intervention of God's Love effects a human's salvation.

HBLL online record

A poster for "The Gospel at Colonus" with black and red text on a yellow background, featuring cast and reviews

Remarkable for its normally line-for-line adaptation of Sophocles' text (specifically in Robert Fitzgerald's translation) to an entirely new context. Breuer discussed in an interview with G. Rabkin how Sophocles shaped a narrative about Oedipus’ death, a “sermon on a happy death” containing some “brilliant poetry... but lacking in dramatic structure". Therefore, says Breuer, he sought and found in American culture the ideal medium that allows him to “express pure ecstatic joy” and pours Sophocles’ narrative into it. (Breuer interview with Rabkin, Performing Arts Journal 8 (1984) 48 - 51.)

A Philadelphia production featured Morgan Freeman and important musicians. See opening 8 minutes of this production, which sets the mood and summarizes the background. Do Not Go On = Soph. OC 36-45 (Fitzgerald). It concludes with Soph. OT 1524-1530 (Fitts/Fitzgerald). Also important for understanding the adaptation is the closing of the gospel where Oedipus' redemption is narrated. cf. Soph. OC 1580-1779 (Fitzgerald) = DVD Track 12 "The Painless Death".