Lee Breuer - The Gospel at Colonus

ADAPTATION AND ORIGINAL LYRICS BY LEE BREUER ADAPTED LYRICS BY BOB TELSON
AND LEE BREUER MUSIC BY BOB TELSON THEATRE COMMUNICATIONS GROUP Copyright 1989 by Lee Breuer and Bob Telson. Earlier version 1983 by Lee Breuer and Bob Telson. Book by Lee Breuer, original lyrics by Lee Breuer, adapted lyrics by Bob Telson and Lee Breuer. (Original music, not contained in this edition, by Bob Telson.) The Gospel at Colonus is published by Theatre Communications Group, Inc., 355 Lexington Ave., New York, NY 10017. All rights reserved. Except for brief passages quoted in newspaper, magazine, radio or television reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or recording, or by an information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the authors.

Professionals and amateurs are hereby warned that this play, being fully protected under the Copyright Laws of the United States of America and all other countries of the Berne and Universal Copyright Conventions, is subject to a royalty. All rights including, but not limited to, professional, amateur, recording, motion picture, recitation, lecturing, public reading, radio and television broadcasting, and the rights of translation into foreign languages are expressly reserved. Particular emphasis is placed on the question of readings and all uses of this play by educational institutions, permission for which must be secured from the authors representative: Liza Lorwin, 61 8th Ave., Brooklyn, NY 11217; (718) 857-9705. Based on an adaptation of Sophocles Oedipus at Colonus in the version by Robert Fitzgerald and incorporating passages from both Sophocles Oedipus Rex and Antigone in the versions by Dudley Fitts and Robert Fitzgerald, which are published as The Oedipus Cycle of Sophocles, a Harvest/HBJ Book, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc. Produced on Broadway, 1988, by Dodger Productions, Liza Lorwin, Louis Busch Hager, Playhouse Square Center and Fifth Avenue Productions; Executive Producers: Michael David, Edward Strong and Sherman Warner. Early development sponsored by Re.Cher.Chez.

Studio, Executive Director: Liza Lorwin, Artistic Directors: Lee Breuer and Ruth Maleczech. Originally produced by the Brooklyn Academy of Music Next Wave Festival, Harvey Lichtenstein, Executive Producer, Joseph V. Melillo, Producer, in association with Liza Lorwin and Walker Art Center. On the cover: Morgan Freeman. All photographs by Martha Swope, copyright 1988. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Breuer, Lee.

The gospel at Colonus / adapted by Lee Breuer ; original lyrics by Lee Breuer ; adapted lyrics by Lee Breuer and Bob Telson. Adaptation of: Oedipus at Colonus / Sophocles. I. Oedipus (Greek mythology)Drama. I. II. Sophocles. Sophocles.

Oedipus at Colonus. III. Title. PS3552.R415G67 1989

812. 54dc19

89-4399 CIP

Design and composition by The Sarabande Press First Edition, June 1989 Fourth Printing, October 2000 FOR LIZA
PRODUCER AND SUSTAINER OF
THE GOSPEL AT COLONUS IN MEMORIAM
JESSE JAMES FARLEYSOUL STIRRER
19151988 Zora Neale Hurston made the connection between Greek tragedy and the sanctified church many years ago. The Gospel at Colonus, in fact, could be said to attempt a proof of her hypothesis.

As was the classic Greek performance, the Pentecostal service is a communal catharsis which forges religious, cultural and political bonds. Should not the living experience teach us something of the historical one? Brooklyns Institutional Radio Choir says: Music is our ministry. The living heritage of Africas oral culture, informing Christianity, is the power of the Pentecostal service. Music means preaching and responding and moving and testifying as well as the playing of instruments and the singing of songs. Would not the oral culture of the Homeric age have similarly informed the theatre of Sophocles? The writer wishes to acknowledge his debt to the composer. Bob Telsons score is a great gift.

May it long be sung, played and remembered. And both writer and composer wish to acknowledge, with an appreciation akin to awe, the creative contributions of the heirs of oral culturethe singers, actors and musicians of The Gospel at Colonus. The writing down of words and music creates only a body. Performance brings to life a soul. Lee Breuer

For the writing in Oedipus, I conceive something lifting up, lifting up to great and easy grandeur of cadence. I conceive a swell; the phrases or sentences or forms gradually letting out and opening to a great roll and then folding softly back. Robert Fitzgerald, 1939 When my husband wrote the above words in his notebook in the late 1930s he was contemplating his own translation of the Oedipus at Colonus, and could not, of course, possibly have imagined The Gospel at Colonus, which would not come into being for over forty more years. Yet, as I read his words now, they have a reverberating significance.

It is interesting enough that when Robert imagined his translation he imagined it first in musical terms. But it is even more intriguing that his first imagination of it was eventually fulfilled, not only in the poetic music of his own words, but also in the actual music of The Gospels recreation. A great work is great for all time and accommodates itself to a changing world. When Robert and Dudley Fitts began translating Greek plays, they hoped to make those ancient dramas come alive for modern audiences. They wished to conceive translations that were close to the originals, but closeness to them implied more than word-for-word translationit also implied the need to reimagine the action of a play, and to translate the spirit of the original into the spirit of a different language. The Gospel at Colonus uses the idea of reimagining in a striking and original way.

The play is not meant to be Sophocles Oedipus, but to be a new play, derived from the original, different from it and yet true to its essential spirit. I remember when Robert wentperhaps with a bit of trepidationto the Brooklyn Academy to see The Gospel. But I remember even more clearly his return. He was exhilarated, as many others have been, filled with admiration for authors who had the imagination, energy and enterprise to see the links between two disparate cultures, vastly separated by time, and to realize their vision in dramatic art. He felt, as I do, that The Gospel at Colonus fulfilled Ezra Pounds dictum to Make It New: it builds on the genius of the past to create something wonderful for the present. Penelope Fitzgerald Penelope Fitzgerald teaches English at Yale University and is editor of The Yale Review.

From the very beginning black preaching was different from white preaching.

It broke all the rules of form and organization. One of the main characteristics of black preaching is storytelling. The black preacher must be a master storyteller. In the past there was a script that even those who were illiterate knew. The script was made up from the Bible stories, scriptures and songs that had been passed on. The black preacher not only had to know the script.

He had to be able to make the story come alive and at the same time stick with the story because the folk he was preaching to knew the story. In black preaching the preacher has to get outside of himself, or in church language, let the spirit take control. In order for the people to judge the preachers call to the ministry authentic, at some point in the sermon he has to lose his cool because he isnt supposed to be in charge anyway. Black preaching is body and soul. Black preaching like black religion is holistic. It engages the whole person.