Versions of Oedipus

We have plays, movies, operas, oratorios, drawings, paintings sculptures, and songs written about Oedipus all performed in every time period imaginable.  It's been translated more than twenty times!  It's been made into at least 2 English films with many more in other languages.  Stravinsky made an Oratorio out of it which sounds kindof creepy, but hey what would you expect it to be like?  The piece starts out very atonal and never really resolves kindof like the play... hmmm...  I've never really big a huge Stravinsky fan, and this piece really didn't change my mind at all.  One of the films was an all star cast with Christopher Plummer, and Orson Welles just to name 2.  For whatever reason, this play has had a huge impact on the world.  Here are some pictures from different productions.

Oedipus Complex

A complex complex.  The Oedipus complex is a phychoanalytic theory involving a child having sexual desire for a parent of the opposite gender and a jealousy for the parent of the same gender.  Sometimes referred to as the Electra (also a play by Sophocles) complex in the case of women.  It was a theory by our favorite phychoanalyst Sigmund Freud.  One can only assume that the name of the complex came about by Oedipus' interesting situation of being married to his mother and wanting to be killed by his father.  Luckily there aren't too many psychologists who take this theory very seriously anymore.  I hope you enjoy this short song about the Oedipus Complex by Tom Lehrer:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9BMcA8-4zo

Derek Russell Davis "Oedipus complex"  The Oxford Companion to the Mind. Richard L. Gregory. Oxford University Press 1987. Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press

Family Tree

Ancient plays can be confusing.  Especially when you add all sorts of crazy incest in the play.  So I figured it might be helpful to clarify who's who in this play.  Oedipus is a decendant of Zeus on both sides of the family.  He's 9 generations down on his dad's (Laius') side and 7 generations down on his mom's (Jocasta's) side.  He married his mother and killed his father, which means that on top of all of the other messed up stuff going on, he has to reconcile the fact that he's his own stepfather.  Pretty heavy stuff. 

About Sophocles!

Sophocles (c. 496-406 bc) was the author of Oedipus The King (or Oedipus Rex (in latin), or Oedipus Tyrannus (in Greek)).  He was the first place winner of a yearly playwriting competition held at the Festival of Dionysos at the age of 27.  I'm 27 now and barely know how to read, let alone write one of the most influencial plays in history.  He must have been quite a guy.  Sadly, of the 100 plays he wrote, we only have 7 and a half left.  Sophocles had an impressive beard as shown below:

"Sophocles"  World Encyclopedia. Philip's, 2008. Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press.

Oedipus Unleashed!

I have chosen to Blog about Oedipus Rex!  I will be directing my comments generally to the actors in the production who might not know about the specifics of the time period that it was written, or the in depth themes of the original writings.  I hope everyone can get as much out of reading this as I have from writing it!