>>PREVIEW
OEDIPUS LOVES YOU
Runs until January 13
Pan Pan Theatre
Vertigo Playhouse (Tower Centre)
It’s the story everybody knows something about, but rarely more than as a Freudian punchline. It’s Sophocles classic Oedipus Rex, the play that launched a thousand neuroses. The story is simple, you know how it goes. It’s the play where boy kills man, boy marries mysteriously recently widowed girl, vows to find killer, and slowly reveals that he has killed his father and married his mother. This year, One Yellow Rabbit’s High Performance Rodeo has invited Dublin, Ireland’s Pan Pan Theatre to launch its version of the ancient classic: Oedipus Loves You.
Pan Pan Theatre as an independent theatre company launched in 1991 when the founding co-artistic directors, Gavin Quinn and Aedin Cosgrove, realized they wanted to bring something new and alive to the stage. "Basically, we did not want to work with anyone else," says Quinn. "Most actors and directors in Ireland work freelance, which can get in the way of creating your own projects."
The theatre company is known for its own unique blend of reinterpretation of the classics and inventing a new way to re-engage the audience with the story. "We have always strived to bring a more visual sense to our projects," says Quinn. "Learning what works and what doesn’t, risk taking for years finding new ways to connect to the audience. We see theatre as a series of interventions with the audience. We make the theatrical experience a vibrant art-form as cultural performance."
Their reinvestigation of Shakespeare in Mac-beth 7 is a look at how, over the centuries, interpretations of Shakespeare’s works have become more important than his plays. Pan Pan’s 100 Actors: The One Project has 100 actors filmed or photographed in their homes, each one giving a one-man show, Quinn describes as "healing with theatre." Now the self-proclaimed "World’s Greatest Theatre Company" is taking on the myth that inspires talk-show hosts and psychotherapists alike.
Working primarily from Sophocles’s Oedipus Rex and Antigone, Pan Pan brings Oedipus to suburbia. Set amongst the mundane trappings of contemporary urban life, Oedipus and family enact the Greek tragedy as family therapy. "Much of the play is meant to be overtly funny," says Quinn. "We also examine how this play can be a warning, even spiritual."
Gavin Quinn as the oracle/director has the actors perform their lines, broadcasting to headphones the actors wear, imposing the restrictions of fate and removing choice from the world of Oedipus and family as the inevitable revelation is painfully revealed.
Quinn sees the performance of Oedipus Loves You as more of a journey, a Pilgrim’s Progress. "There is no self-pity," says Quinn. "There is strength in acceptance. At one point Oedipus, true to therapy, shouts out, ‘I know I’ve done something wrong, but I love you.’ The whole story of Oedipus is like a Bible left behind in a motel room – the interpretation is left up to you." |
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