THE OEDIPUS CYCLE
Play by: Sophocles
Adaptation by: Neil Truglio
© Modest Arts
Director: Neil Truglio
Set Design: Neil Truglio
Light Design: Bryce Foster
Costume Design: Chantelle Frazier
Photo Credits: Sean Dolan
The Oedipus Cycle was originally produced by the Harlequin Players in April of 2012.
"When I first began the process of tackling Sophocles' masterpiece, I intended to stage Antigone as a stand-alone play, but as we started to unpack it, I quickly realized we could tell a much more rounded story by using Antigone as our central character, while utilizing text from Oedipus Rex and Oedipus at Colonus through flack-backs. The story of Antigone became our current timeline and was told in modern dress, the two prequels were spread throughout the story in mask to symbolize the historical nature of their influence on the current characters. All actors were cast in two roles, one from the current timeline of Antigone and one from the first two pieces of the cycle. The stage was made up of a small mountain, covered in sand as we used the Thebes of Egypt as our basis for location. At the top of the mountain a tree grew up and into the rafters which symbolized the family tree of Oedipus. As characters would die, their mask would be hung on the trunk of the tree, the actor was then freed of the character to continue to follow the path of their character in Antigone. The staging of the play was in a black-box style, with the audience seated on the stage in a three-quarter thrust looking out into the empty house, to symbolize the cave that Antigone would be sealed in."