Oedipus

The overarching theme in Oedipus is twofold: a political message and a social message. The political message is that there is danger in a non-democratic government. The social message is that we are the creators of our own destiny, but the idea of fate shapes that creation. Although the play was written well over 2,000 years ago, the ideas are still relevant. Politically, in today’s society, there is a great deal of talk about the devolution of democracy in America due to various events in the recent past. This is targeted through the play’s political message. Socially, there is such a huge emphasis on the future, and what we as individuals are supposed to do about it. People rely too much on what they are supposed to do (‘fate’), and go about trying to find that path on their own (creating destiny).

Collages

My concept of the play was about the disintegration of Oedipus, and more general, of kingdoms, which I displayed through the platforms. The basic, structured, even set of platforms starts off whole, but as they decrease in level and increase in size, they become more frayed and fragmented, ending with a set of broken stairs. In the back, the oversized doorway was used practically as an entrance, but artistically as a manner of portraying the grandiose image of Oedipus as king.

As part of the assignment, we had to create two designs- one for the original Greek time period, and one for an alternate time period. I selected Egypt of the 1950s as the alternative setting for this production of Oedipus. In 1954, Gamel Abdel Nasser, one of the key architects of the 1952 revolution, ousted the president, taking over his position two years later in what was the beginning of his authoritarian rule. I felt that many parallels could be drawn between Oedipus and his Thebes and Nasser and his Egypt, particularly on a political level with warnings against authoritarianism, as seen in one of the major themes of the play.

In the alternate time period, I used the same platforms and modified the background to fit the environmental atmosphere of Egypt, based on my research. As the lessons learned from the Nasser era fit almost identically to those in Oedipus, I felt that the reuse of the Greek platforms was completely appropriate.

Greek Time Period

Alternate Time Period- Egypt, 1950s

Photos by Karel Blakeley