“A younger audience will hear the word “˜Elektra’ or “˜Oedipus’ and try to stay away from it,” Rivera said. The audience sees how their relationship began,” said Jon Rivera, director of “Oedipus El Rey.”Īnd the fact that the play is a modern adaptation opens the material to a younger crowd. We have the scene where Oedipus and Jocasta meet for the first time and also their seduction scene. The original play starts after half of the action has already occurred. The love scene with Jocasta, which is not part of the original “Oedipus Rex,” is an attempt by Alfaro to create the backstory of the Oedipus myth. The rest is Greek tragedy history, with a few twists crafted by Alfaro. After solving the sphinx’s riddle, he inherits Laius’ kingdom ““ the barrio of Pico Union in downtown Los Angeles ““ and marries Jocasta. When Oedipus jets to Los Angeles to start a new life, he meets Laius and kills him in a fit of road rage, not knowing it is his real father. Having been abandoned by his father and mother as a baby, he was raised by the prophet Tiresias. However, Alfaro’s leaner, meaner version of “Oedipus Rex” characterizes Oedipus as a delinquent just released from the California state prison in Kern County. “Our goal is to elicit the same level of response that people had in the ancient world.”Īs in the original, “Oedipus El Rey” is about Oedipus’ inability to escape his fate of killing his biological father, Laius, and committing incest with his mother, Jocasta. “It’s one thing to have a gallery and another to actually present these works in a theater,” said Laurel Kishi, manager of performing arts for the J. The integration of live performance with the classical art and architecture of the Getty Villa makes for a more complete experience of Grecian culture. “One of the difficulties in adapting a Greek tragedy is that you have to activate the journey that the modern audience might not know,” Alfaro said. The lab is a workshop that encourages writers and directors to create new work based on ancient texts that is relatable to the modern audience. The play premieres tonight at the Getty Villa in Malibu as part of a series of adaptations of classical works put on by the Villa Theater Lab. “You have to make it sexy, but you can’t make it too sexy because it would be too freaky for the audience,” said Alfaro, author of “Oedipus El Rey,” a latinized interpretation of Sophocles’ tragic Greek play “Oedipus Rex.” As playwright Luis Alfaro will tell you, writing a love scene for a guy and his mother is hard work.
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