4 The City on the Edge: Lee Breuer's The Gospel at Colonus

Abstract

Lee Breuer's The Gospel at Colonus foregrounds the themes found in Oedipus at Colonus, of reconciliation and integration, and tests them against America's racially divided society. The analyses in this chapter concentrate on various comparisons between Gospel and its Greek antecedent: on the representation of Oedipus, on descriptions of time and change, on the inconcinnity between the Christian and the Greek worldviews, and on the notion of place. The chapter shows that Gospel reworks the exacting bleakness of the Greek play in the service of a vision of a racially integrated American polity. Its utopian politics, however, may be compromised by its other allegiances, including its commitment to the theatrical roots of tragedy. To pursue this tension, the play is read in relation to the traditions of gospel music, other black theatre, and the American avant-garde.

fall and rise of King Oedipus

“…(Lee Breuer's wonderful The Gospel at Colonus is an example of how amenable this story is to Christological rendition). 50 However, it is admitted that such a transformation still carries with it a good dose of tragic uncertainty, since the nature of Oedipus' eschatological existence remains underdetermined within the text itself: does he experience an apotheosis, or does he simply become a hero? Does he enter Olympus or descend to the underworld?…”