Dionysis -- Biomechanics
my eGroups
act.vtheatre.net
direct.vtheatre.net
film.vtheatre.net
script.vtheatre.net
shows.vtheatre.net
web.vtheatre.net
method.vtheatre.net
biomechanics.vtheatre.net
HamletWeb 2002
GeoAlaska: Theatre & Film
Theory of Spectatorship
Mailing List & News -- subscribe yourself *
Method for Directors?
ShowCases: 3 Sisters, Mikado, 12th Night, Hamlet, The Importance of Being Earnest, Dangerous Liaisons, Don Juan
Summary
Cast = 3 + 1 + 15 (chorus)The story of Oedipus and his children was the most famous legendary cycle of ancient Greece after the Trojan cycle. It inspired ¨¡schylus a cycle known as the Theban tetralogy, made up of three tragedies : Laius, Oedipus and The Seven against Thebes, and a satirical drama : The Sphinx, of which only The Seven against Thebes is still extant ; it also inspired several tragedies to Sophocles, of which Oedipus Tyrannus, Antigone and Oedipus at Colonus are still extant, and to Euripides, including a lost Antigone and the extant Phoenician Women and Suppliants; Oedipus is mentioned only twice in Plato's dialogues, both times in the Laws.
Questions
- The ritualistic dance of the Chorus?
Notes
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
The title of our play is often given in its Latin translation "Oedipus Rex", rather than in its original Greek ("Oedipus Tyranneus"), since the Greek term for king is the English "tyrant" which means a monarch who rules without the consent of the people.
Oedipus was not daunted by these alarming accounts, but boldly advanced to the trial. The Sphinx asked him, "What animal is that which in the morning goes on four feet, at noon on two, and in the evening upon three?" Oedipus replied, "Man, who in childhood creeps on hands and knees, in manhood walks erect, and in old age with the aid of a staff." The Sphinx was so mortified at the solving of her riddle that she cast herself down the rock and perished. [ from Bulfinch's Mythology ]
Thebes was the largest and richest city of Boeotia, owing to the fertility of its territory. In mythological traditions, it was founded by Cadmus, a Phoenician, son of Agenor, king of Sidon (or Tyre, in Syria), himself the son of Poseidon and a descendant of Zeus and Io through his mother Libya. Cadmus had a sister named Europa who was abducted by Zeus under the guise of a bull (Zeus brought her to Crete and, from her, had three sons : Minos, Sarpedon and Rhadamanthus). Agenor then ordered Cadmus and his brothers Thasus , Phoenix and Cilix to go search for their sister and not come back till they had found her. Each one took a different road and, unable to find her, they kept going, founding city after city along their way. These wanderings led Cadmus in Crete, Thera, Samothrace, Rhodes and in many other place. Cadmus was eventually ordered by the oracle of Delphi to stop searching his sister and found a city where, upon following a cow, the animal would stop of exhaustion. The cow he thus followed stopped at the location of what became Thebes. In order to cleanse the cow before offering it in sacrifice to Athena, Cadmus sent some of his companions draw water from a neighboring spring. But there, they were killed by a dragon. Upon seeing that, Cadmus fought and killed the dragon and Athena, appearing to him, suggested that he sow the teeth of the dead animal. As soon as he had done this, armed warriors sprang from the earth. Feeling threatened by these men, Cadmus threw stones in the middle of them. Not knowing where the stones came from, the "sowed men" (the Spartoi, as they became called) killed each other, except for five of them, one of whom, Echion, later married Agave, a daughter of Cadmus. To expiate the murder of the dragon, Cadmus had to serve Ares for eight year, and after that, with the help of Athena, he became king of Thebes and Zeus gave him Harmonia, the daughter of Ares and Aphrodite, for wife. All the gods attended the wedding of Cadmus and Harmonia, where the Muses sang, and they brought gifts to the bride, including a wonderful dress weaved by the Graces (Charites inGreek), daughters of Zeus, and a golden necklace made by Hephaistus (which would later play a role in the expedition of the Seven against Thebes, in the time of Adrastus, king of Argos).
[Herodotus, in his Histories, V, 57-58, credits Cadmus and his Phoenician companions with introducing many new techniques in Greece, including the alphabet (and indeed, the Greek alphabet is derived from the Phoenician alphabet, which is the first known alphabet, that is, a writing system based on letters representing elementary sounds rather than ideograms, like the Egyptian hieroglyphs, or syllables, like the Cretan Linear A and B writing systems that preceeded it ; this alphabet was invented by the Phoenicians around 1100 B. C. and introduced in Greece probably around the end of the IXth century B. C. or beginning of the VIIIth ; the main innovation of the Greeks with respect to writing was to add letters for vowels to an alphabet which, like today's Hebrew or Arabic alphabets, included only consonants).
Plato too alludes to the story of Cadmus in several places : at Menexenus, 245d, he mentions the offspring of Cadmus as not being genuine Greeks ; at Laws, II, 663e, he mentions the story of "the Sidonian" and the sowing of the teeth as an example of how easy it is to make people believe a worthy lie, in keeping with what was said at Republic, III, 414b, sq about the noble lie, with a reference to the same "Phoenician story" ; the story of the sowed men fighting each other is behind Plato's reference to "Cadmeian victories" at Laws, I, 641c to show the ill effects of pride in victory ; then, in the Ph¯do, Socrates compares Simmias and Cebes, who are Thebans, to Harmonia and Cadmus respectively, when moving from the answer to Simmias objection of the soul-harmony to the answer to Cebes' objection (Ph¯do, 95a). ]
Cadmus and Harmonia had several children : Polydorus, a son, and four daughters, Autonoe, Ino, Agave and Semele. Semele was loved by Zeus and, when Hera learned that she was pregnant, filled with jealousy, she suggested Semele to ask Zeus to appear to her in all his glory. Zeus, who had promised her to do all she would ask, showed himself amidst lightnings and thunderstorms, which Semele couldn't bear and which caused her death. Zeus immediately removed the child she was bearing (she was in her sixth month of pregnancy) and sewed him in his own thigh, until the time of birth came and Dionysus (the "twice-born") was born in perfect health. Zeus entrusted the baby to Hermes, who gave him to his mother's sister Ino and her husband Athamas, king of Coronea (or Orchomenus) in Boeotia, and brother of Sisyphus, king of Corinth. But Hera, still jealous, struck Athamas with madness, so that he killed one of the sons he had had from Ino. Ino herself, rendered mad by this, killed her other son, Melicertes, by plunging him into a pot of boiling water, and then, killed herself by jumping into the sea, somewhere between Corinth and Megara, with the body of her dead son, and thereafter became a marine goddess under the name Leucothea ("the white goddess"). According to some traditions, the Isthmian games, that were celebrated near Corinth, were instituted by Sisyphus in honor of his nephew Melicertes.
[ * ]
Special lecture: "Open house" lecture about Sophocles, Oedipus, Greek mythology and more. Featuring the Stage Director of Oedipus Rex Anatoly Anohin, Set Designer Timaree McCormick, Lillian Corti "Blindness, Sight, and Psycoanalysis in Oedipus" of the UAF English Department and Dr. Joseph Thompson "Oedipus Rex and the Oracle at Delphi" of the UAF Philosophy & Humanities Department. Monday, March 28, 5:30pm in the Lee H. Salisbury Theatre Oedipus Rex Educational
go there and -- Download our handout 630k pdf
Pasolini: 1967
UAF Cast list is @ 
More photos from the show are @ costumes.org (Tara's pages), including the costumes designs.
I will post the reactions/reviews from the students and school kids, when the show is over.
Cadmus founded the city of Thebes after he killed a dragon, and he sowed the dragon's teeth into the ground, from which sprang Thebes' first inhabitants. Thus, Thebes' current residents are mainly descended either from a hero who tamed the wild beast, or from the beast itself. [ Think about the relation of this background to the larger theme of civilization and savagery. ]
geoAlaska *
Make THEATRE/FILM w/ANATOLY your homepage -- click here!
